John Gordon Torrey was a wise, sober man of great determination and high principle -- truthful, straightforward, honest and fair. He brought these attributes to all of his professional judgments and personal relationships.

John Gordon Torrey was the son of the Philadelphia banker W. Edward Torrey and his wife Elsie (Gordon) Torrey. He was born in Philadelphia on February 22, 1921, the third of four children and the second son in the family. He received his B.A. at Williams College in 1942. Then he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as an officer in the Medical Administrative Corps with the 317th Station Hospital in the U.S. and in the European Theatre. Professor Kenneth Thimann recalls that John Torrey came to Harvard while still in uniform and was the first graduate student to come into the Biology Department after World War II. Professor Thimann supervised John Torrey's graduate research; Professor Ralph Wetmore provided additional guidance. After receiving an M.A. from Harvard in 1947, he was awarded a traveling fellowship that enabled him to spend the year 1948-49 at Cambridge University's Botany School. In 1949, in England, he was married to Noreen Lea-Wilson with whom he had become acquainted during his military service in England a few years earlier. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree by Harvard in 1950 but before that time, in 1949, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He remained on the Berkeley faculty until July of 1960 when he took up a Professorship in the Biology Department at Harvard. He retired in 1991 and died on the 7th of January 1993. His remarkable determination and strength of character was evident through his last days. Published obituaries noted that he was survived by his wife, Noreen, and five daughters -- Jennifer, Joanna, Susan, Sarah and Carolyn. Those obituaries failed to note that he was also survived by his teacher, K. V. Thimann, as well as scores of admiring colleagues and former students.

John Torrey identified the subject of his more than fifty year-long research career -- the growth and development of roots -- while an undergraduate at Williams. In his undergraduate research at Williams and then in his Ph. D. research at Harvard, he investigated the role of the plant growth hormone indoleacetic acid on the initiation of branch roots from single cells in the pericyle, a one cell-thick tissue deep in the root. His Harvard Ph. D. thesis reflected Professor Thimann's emphasis on plant physiology and Professor Ralph Wetmore's interest and experience in studying the formation and differentiation of plant tissues and organs. During the 1950's at Berkeley, John Torrey continued to study root morphogenesis; his research papers and reviews are the foundations of much of contemporary experimental root biology.

Starting in the mid-1950s he became interested in nitrogen fixation in plants. The roots of legumes produce nodules inhabited by a form of the Rhizobium bacterium. In the nodules, energy supplied by the plant, in the form of products of photosynthesis, is used to convert atmospheric nitrogen into building blocks for plant proteins. By the mid-1970s nodule formation had become the major subject of John Torrey's research. Some shrubs and trees have nodules that fix atmospheric nitrogen but do not contain Rhizobium bacteria. Such nodules were called mycorrhiza because everyone was certain that a fungus was the plant's partner in nodule formation and nitrogen fixation but the microorganism had never been isolated. All of this changed in 1978 when John Torrey and his coworkers D. Callaham and P. Del Tredici reported that they had isolated from "mycorrhizae" and cultivated in vitro not a fungus but the actinomycete Frankia and showed that it is the nitrogen fixing partner of the nonlegume Comptonia. A new field of research was born because of this information and the availability of Frankia in culture. In the period from 1978 to 1991, John Torrey's laboratory alone published more than 70 papers on aspects of the development and structure of Frankia nodules in actinorrhizal plants.

John Torrey's contributions to science were recognized by many invitations to speak and by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, to the Presidency of the Society for Developmental Biology in 1963, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. His wisdom and good judgment were recognized by his appointment to numerous advisory posts and editorial positions.

Five years after he joined the Harvard faculty, John Torrey was appointed the fifth Director of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research. He retained this position for 10 years. At his initiative the Foundation funded the construction of a much needed expansion of the University's herbaria and the establishment of the Controlled Environment Facility at the Harvard Forest. The latter is now named the John G. Torrey Laboratory.

Because of his research interests, his personal and professional associations with Professor Martin Zimmermann (then Director of the Harvard Forest) and Professor P. B. Tomlinson (the other senior faculty member at the Forest), and his concern for the future of the Harvard Forest, John Torrey moved his laboratory to the Forest in 1970. Upon Professor Zimmermann's untimely death in 1984, John Torrey was appointed Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Director of the Harvard Forest. He remained in that position until 1990. He had a great impact on the Harvard Forest: from initiating Freshman Seminars there to organizing a consortium of scientists from several universities to conduct research at the Forest. The latter led to the award of a large grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a Long Term Ecological Research Site. John Torrey, the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research and the National Science Foundation all contributed to a major strengthening of the Forest. These effects on the Forest must stand among John Torrey's most important enduring entrepreneurial contributions to the University and the scientific community.

At a memorial service for John Torrey about a year ago, his daughter Joanna read a touching piece entitled "My Father, The Collector." It told of his enthusiasm for collecting botanical specimens, old fashioned long-handled drugstore soda spoons and the locations of blue-plate lunch restaurants in the neighborhoods or towns in which he liked to collect. But his particular collecting ardor was saved for British, Scottish and New England etchings from the period of about 1880 to 1930. In his retirement, he planned to study, and to write about, "the interaction, interplay and influence of the group of British etchers on the Americans and vice versa."

John Torrey was outspoken and, in his controlled way, passionate about what he thought was right and what he thought was unjust and thus wrong. This is reflected in his comments on certain aspects of the management of endowment funds by the University in a personal chapter he wrote in 1994 in his short volume on the "History of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research of Harvard University, 1937-1987." He was concerned with the ethics of science and, more, always concerned with the ethics of people in dealing with one another. He is a man to miss.

David R. Foster

Reed C. Rollins

Otto T. Solbrig

Kenneth V. Thimann

Philip Barry Tomlinson

Lawrence Bogorad, Chairman

 

---

Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Arthur T. Hertig

Arthur Tremain Hertig, HMS '30, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy, Emeritus, died suddenly on July 20th, 1990, in his 86th year after a distinguished, varied, and colorful scientific career, much of it spent in association with Harvard Medical School.

Born in Minneapolis, he was initially attracted toward a career in entomology, and indeed began his scientific career as a high school senior working part-time in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. He later wrote that the "vista of science opened for me. At 40 cents an hour the pay and intellectual climate were better than working in a bakery-ice cream establishment," -- where he had worked previously -- "good though that was." His elder brother, Marshall, was an entomologist and no doubt this played a role in Dr. Hertig's life-long interest in entomology; in later years, he termed himself a "pseudo-entomologist." Entomology was pursued as a means of financial support in college and later in medical school. A greatly admired family physician led Hertig to study medicine at the University of Minnesota. Following his freshman year, the lure of entomology drew him to take a two year leave of absence from medical school to work with Marshall in China at the Peking Union Medical College. During the course of his work as Marshall's assistant in field studies on the insect transmission of Kala Azar, the brothers devised an ingenious method for artificially feeding sand flies (the insect vector now known to transmit Kala Azar), and to infect them with Leishmania donovani, the causative agent. The technique was reported in Science in 1927 and was the first of Dr. Hertig's many and diverse scientific papers; he was always proud of this particular publication. Fortuitously, Dr. David L. Edsall, then Dean of the Harvard Medical School, was in China at that time, and young Hertig had the opportunity of demonstrating (with the last captive sand fly of the season!) his technique. Dean Edsall was so impressed with the procedure and its inventor that he invited Hertig to transfer to Harvard Medical School to continue his medical studies, which he did in 1928 (luckily for HMS) after completing his second year in Minnesota.

At that time S. Burt Wolbach, the IVth Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy at HMS and Pathologist-in-Chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was carrying out his authoritative investigations on diseases caused by rickettsiae and their transmission by insects. Naturally, with his interest in entomology, Hertig was drawn to work with Dr. Wolbach and was hired in 1929 to spend a summer of field research with him on Naushon Island and Martha's Vineyard, working on a project to control wood ticks. Hertig's interest in pathology was piqued by his contact with Dr. Wolbach, so, after he graduated M.D. in 1930, he started training as a house officer in pathology at the Peter Bent Brigham. With barely eight months of formal training under his belt, Dr. Hertig was invited by Dr. Wolbach to establish the first pathology laboratory at the former Boston Lying-in Hospital. The invitation was extended while Drs. Wolbach, Farber and Hertig were walking down Longwood Avenue on Valentine's Day, 1931. Fortunately, Dr. Hertig paid no heed to some of his peers who advised him that there was no future in obstetric pathology as reproduction and childbirth were normal, physiologic phenomena -- furthermore, as he pointed out, this was a paying job in the Depression.

In 1933 a one year National Research Council Fellowship in Embryology enabled Dr. Hertig to study at the Carnegie Institute in Baltimore, under the eminent embryologist George L. Streeter. There was a two-fold outcome of his sojourn in Baltimore: a lifelong interest in early human development and in obstetric and gynecologic pathology, and a masterly and beautifully illustrated opus published in 1935, on the cellular events involved in angiogenesis in early human and Macaque monkey placentas. It was also at the Carnegie that Dr. Hertig, "as an interested onlooker", learned a technique developed there of isolating early fertilized ova from primates. This experience was to have enormous consequences in his research some years later. On his return to Boston, Dr. Hertig completed his training in pathology under Dr. Sidney Farber at the Children's Hospital, and was appointed assistant pathologist at the Boston Lying-in Hospital. In addition, on the advice and urging of Frederick C. Irving, Richardson Professor of Obstetrics, he simultaneously undertook full-scale training in obstetrics and gynecology -- no mean feat -- and was later certified a diplomate by both the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Pathology in 1944 and 1946 respectively. Although initially Dr. Hertig was an Instructor in Pathology for six years, by 1948 he had risen to the rank of Professor and pathologist at the two Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals for obstetrics and gynecology, the Boston Lying-in Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women. In 1952, he was appointed Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Chair of the Department of Pathology, positions which he held for 18 and 16 years respectively. In order to return to full-time research, he resigned somewhat ahead of time from the Chair, joining the staff of the New England Primate Center in Southborough, Massachusetts, as Chief of the Division of Pathobiology, (whilst, he said, "I still have all my buttons."). Dr. Hertig became Emeritus in 1974, but continued to work at the Primate Center virtually until his death.

Dr. Hertig often talked about the role of chance in his life, but clearly, in accord with Pasteur's aphorism, chance favored his prepared mind. A further instance of this in Dr. Hertig's career was when he became pathologist at the Free Hospital for Women in 1938, and began his long-standing collaboration, describing the early human ovum, with Dr. John Rock, HMS '18; the egg-harvesting techniques he had observed at the Carnegie for collecting ova now bore fruit. Drs. Hertig and Rock collected 34 normal and abnormal human ova from uteri and fallopian tubes removed for gynecologic disease. These ova were studied in fastidious detail in a series of ageless papers published over a span of fifteen years. These studies included the first description of the earliest stage of human development, the two-cell ovum, which appears in all major textbooks of anatomy, embryology and gynecology. Only 34 of 210 egg-hunts were successful! Those who were present when an "egg-hunt" was in progress marveled at the dedication, care, dexterity and patience displayed in finding the ovum, photographing it at the gross level, then serially sectioning it for microscopic analysis and reconstruction. These systematic studies, accomplished without formal grant support, were basic to the subsequent development of current management of infertile patients and our ability to transplant fertilized ova.

Being a sports fan, Dr. Hertig would not infrequently claim that the successful conclusion of the hunt occurred, for instance, at the very moment Ted Williams hit a home run, or at the moment Dominic DiMaggio tied the 1946 World Series for the Boston Red Sox with a double, and thus the appropriate sobriquet was attached to that particular ovum -- even if it turned out to be a "bad egg," a lost game, or a lost series.

Dr. Hertig's further scientific publications encompass the breadth of obstetric and gynecologic pathology. The early studies on angiogenesis in the early human chorion and in the primary placenta of the Macaque monkey formed the basis for analyses of abortuses, hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma. These reports are basic to our understanding of trophoblastic disease and its treatment. Dr. Hertig's monograph, Human Trophoblast, published in 1968, is the synthesis of his lifelong fascination with this tissue.

Alongside the trophoblastic studies, were fundamental and classic studies on dating the human endometrium in the menstrual cycle, and correlation of the endometrial patterns with corpus luteum development and function. Atypical endometrial patterns were correlated with the development of adenocarcinoma. Together with Paul Younge he worked on the interpretation of early abnormal changes in the cervix preceding the development of squamous cell carcinoma. Overall Dr. Hertig made pioneering and significant contributions in placental pathology, precancerous lesions of the endometrium and cervix, and trophoblastic disease. He wrote all three of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology fascicles dealing with female genital tract tumors. Nevertheless, he took the most pleasure in his studies of the early ovum. Through his research contributions, at a time when obstetric and gynecologic pathology in the USA was dominated by European-trained physicians, Dr. Hertig rose to be the first truly great native-trained pathologist in that subspecialty. Moreover, he was well-known as a caring and compassionate physician. His concern for patients, his wisdom and his vast expertise, made him highly regarded as a consultant on whom clinical colleagues markedly depended for guidance.

After retiring from the Chair of the Department of Pathology in 1968, Dr. Hertig moved his laboratory to the New England Primate Research Center where, with typical zest and curiosity, he focused his attention on nonhuman primate reproductive pathophysiology, and made some remarkable contributions, including investigations of the placental lesions associated with spontaneous abortion, vaginal adenosis, and the ultrastructure of ova.

Dr. Hertig's teaching is remembered by many HMS graduates. He loved introducing medical students to obstetric and gynecologic pathology, but did not neglect ensuring that other areas of pathology were properly covered. Many of the gross specimens and slides were personally inspected as to suitability for the students. His lectures were clear and concise, scholarly and logical, and laced with a delicious sense of humor, personal anecdotes and mordant wit. Dr. Hertig would tell the students that he was "just a hospital pathologist", and that he would lecture on the female reproductive tract, which was important because it was possessed by 50% of the population, and also because "it was the only thing he knew about." What was unique was that Dr. Hertig would sit in on lectures in the course, especially those given by the junior faculty. He would take pages of notes in longhand, just as a student would, and at the end of the lecture hand the notes to the lecturer, saying, "Well, this is what I understood. If I got it wrong, you'd better do something about it." He felt that successful teaching was couched in simple language.

His regard and concern for students was reflected in the fact that, for some years, he endeavored to have every student in the class, in a small group, to tea in his office. This was an enormous consumption of his time, but was a vivid reflection of his concern for students and for teaching. In fact, on two occasions, Dr. Hertig received the highest award at HMS, given by the students themselves, for excellence in teaching, and was made an honorary member of one the graduating classes -- a signal recognition of his interest in students.

After the completion of teaching on Friday mornings, the faculty would meet in the department for lunch. Seated at the head of a long table, Dr. Hertig would regale the company with aphorisms, stories, jokes and pearls of wisdom. In reference to his own career he was fond of saying "I have gone a long way on a few dozen eggs and a bunch of grapes" -- the latter referring to his work on hydatidiform moles. Other favorite phrases were "the morphology, the more fun" (bad puns did not faze him). He would aver that there was little correlation between quality of work and fanciness of laboratory surroundings and equipment. Reflecting on his own research, accomplished without high technology, he stated: "We need high-powered thinking with low-powered tools." Certainly his own major tool was the dissecting microscope. He referred to a luncheon party that he hosted for John Rock, his long-time friend and collaborator, as the "Hertig-Rock festival." His faculty and residents were always eager to hear his words and laugh with him at pomposity. He would recount progress on the refurbishing of his wooden sailboat, including bending the ribs, an art which he had learnt from a carpenter at the medical school. Sailing was his main hobby, relished at his summer home in Gloucester, Mass. A whale washed up on his beach one year, and the saga of having it removed -- all officialdom disclaiming responsibility -- entertained his listeners for weeks; some accused him of deliberately arranging the beaching as a conversation piece! His adventures in China must have led to a liking for Chinese food: he would expound on and demonstrate the use of chopsticks.

He loved words, their twists of meaning and their sound, and would insist on correct and euphonious usage, which entailed frequent consulting of dictionaries and thesauri. On accepting the highest award of the American Association of Pathologists, the Gold-Headed Cane, he said he was both "astounded" and "surprised" -- astounded by the honor, and surprised when he heard of it. He then discoursed learnedly on the differences in precise meaning of these words. He quoted the anecdote concerning Dr. Samuel Johnson, discovered by his wife kissing the maid. Johnson's wife exclaimed: "Why, Dr. Johnson, I am surprised." Said Johnson, "On the contrary, madame, you are astounded; I am surprised!" Dr. Hertig wittily pointed out that actually "surprise" and "astound" can be in some senses synonymous, which leaves us "a bit confused, as undoubtedly, both the wife and Dr. Johnson were, not to mention the maid herself." Paradoxically, he disliked writing papers, agonized over them: nevertheless, he has some 200 papers to his name. He spent hours going over manuscripts and grant applications of junior faculty. The writings of E.B. White, particularly Stuart Little, were much quoted.

Happenings in his science as well as in his personal life were described in vivid terms. In his biographic sketch, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1973, he synopsized his career as "forty years in the female pelvis -- a case of prolonged dystocia." Many will remember his exhortation when life looked gloomy -- "Be of good cheer!"

Dr. Hertig took an active leadership role in many professional societies. These included inter alia, President of the American Board of Pathology, the New England Society of Pathology, the New England Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, Governor of the College of American Pathologists, and a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Consultants to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

He received many awards and honors: among these were election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, corecipient with John Rock of the American Gynecological Society Award, the Ward Burdick Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology, Distinguished Service Awards from the College of American Pathologists, the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (also elected an Honorary Fellow), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (which also inducted him into their Hall of Fame), the American Gynecological Society, and from the International Academy of Pathology, the Distinguished Pathologist Award. The American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists gave him its most prestigious award, the "Gold-Headed Cane"; and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London, elected him an honorary ad eundem fellow (only one American a year can be so honored).

It was typical of the man that in a published speech "On Accepting An Award," he declared, in tribute to his teachers, "Pigmaei gigantum humerus impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident" -- pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.

Many are those who have stood on Dr. Hertig's shoulders, and have become well-known and successful in their own right. A ruddy-faced, rather bluff man, Dr. Hertig revealed, on acquaintance, an outgoing, kind and sensitive persona. Generous with his time and wisdom, his teaching of fellows and residents was vivid, full of wit and whimsy, and laced with countless humorous anecdotes. When he viewed something through the microscope that was distinctive but not familiar, he would say: "This is a classic example of whatever it is!" An inspiring, tireless and kind teacher of residents and fellows, he could not stand cant and pomposity, stating: "One must take the job but not one's self seriously."

Dr. Hertig, his beloved wife, Linda, on whom he was greatly dependent, and their two children, Helen and Andrew, led a happy, close-knit home life. Many students, residents and faculty will remember gracious hospitality at their homes in Winchester and Mussel Point, Gloucester, Mass., and numerous kind gestures of helpful interest in their personal lives. Tragedy struck in 1983 when Helen and her younger daughter were killed in a plane crash; in 1988, Linda died. Dr. Hertig bore these blows with fortitude, sustained by his strong religious faith, and supported by Andrew and his family, and Helen's children. His later years were clouded by severe arthritis, and his second marriage to Frances Thomas lasted unfortunately but a few happy months.

Dr. Hertig's contributions to science and medicine are imperishable; his impression on our minds and hearts as a teacher, leader, colleague and friend is indelible.

Respectfully submitted by:

Morris J. Karnovsky, Chair

Kurt Benirschke

George Th. Diamandopoulos

Shirley Driscoll

Robert Ehrmann

Hazel Gore

Lorna Johnson

Norval King

Hermann Lisco

Guido Majno

Robert Scully

February 1, 1996

John Gordon Torrey was a wise, sober man of great determination and high principle -- truthful, straightforward, honest and fair. He brought these attributes to all of his professional judgments and personal relationships.

John Gordon Torrey was the son of the Philadelphia banker W. Edward Torrey and his wife Elsie (Gordon) Torrey. He was born in Philadelphia on February 22, 1921, the third of four children and the second son in the family. He received his B.A. at Williams College in 1942. Then he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as an officer in the Medical Administrative Corps with the 317th Station Hospital in the U.S. and in the European Theatre. Professor Kenneth Thimann recalls that John Torrey came to Harvard while still in uniform and was the first graduate student to come into the Biology Department after World War II. Professor Thimann supervised John Torrey's graduate research; Professor Ralph Wetmore provided additional guidance. After receiving an M.A. from Harvard in 1947, he was awarded a traveling fellowship that enabled him to spend the year 1948-49 at Cambridge University's Botany School. In 1949, in England, he was married to Noreen Lea-Wilson with whom he had become acquainted during his military service in England a few years earlier. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree by Harvard in 1950 but before that time, in 1949, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He remained on the Berkeley faculty until July of 1960 when he took up a Professorship in the Biology Department at Harvard. He retired in 1991 and died on the 7th of January 1993. His remarkable determination and strength of character was evident through his last days. Published obituaries noted that he was survived by his wife, Noreen, and five daughters -- Jennifer, Joanna, Susan, Sarah and Carolyn. Those obituaries failed to note that he was also survived by his teacher, K. V. Thimann, as well as scores of admiring colleagues and former students.

John Torrey identified the subject of his more than fifty year-long research career -- the growth and development of roots -- while an undergraduate at Williams. In his undergraduate research at Williams and then in his Ph. D. research at Harvard, he investigated the role of the plant growth hormone indoleacetic acid on the initiation of branch roots from single cells in the pericyle, a one cell-thick tissue deep in the root. His Harvard Ph. D. thesis reflected Professor Thimann's emphasis on plant physiology and Professor Ralph Wetmore's interest and experience in studying the formation and differentiation of plant tissues and organs. During the 1950's at Berkeley, John Torrey continued to study root morphogenesis; his research papers and reviews are the foundations of much of contemporary experimental root biology.

Starting in the mid-1950s he became interested in nitrogen fixation in plants. The roots of legumes produce nodules inhabited by a form of the Rhizobium bacterium. In the nodules, energy supplied by the plant, in the form of products of photosynthesis, is used to convert atmospheric nitrogen into building blocks for plant proteins. By the mid-1970s nodule formation had become the major subject of John Torrey's research. Some shrubs and trees have nodules that fix atmospheric nitrogen but do not contain Rhizobium bacteria. Such nodules were called mycorrhiza because everyone was certain that a fungus was the plant's partner in nodule formation and nitrogen fixation but the microorganism had never been isolated. All of this changed in 1978 when John Torrey and his coworkers D. Callaham and P. Del Tredici reported that they had isolated from "mycorrhizae" and cultivated in vitro not a fungus but the actinomycete Frankia and showed that it is the nitrogen fixing partner of the nonlegume Comptonia. A new field of research was born because of this information and the availability of Frankia in culture. In the period from 1978 to 1991, John Torrey's laboratory alone published more than 70 papers on aspects of the development and structure of Frankia nodules in actinorrhizal plants.

John Torrey's contributions to science were recognized by many invitations to speak and by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, to the Presidency of the Society for Developmental Biology in 1963, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. His wisdom and good judgment were recognized by his appointment to numerous advisory posts and editorial positions.

Five years after he joined the Harvard faculty, John Torrey was appointed the fifth Director of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research. He retained this position for 10 years. At his initiative the Foundation funded the construction of a much needed expansion of the University's herbaria and the establishment of the Controlled Environment Facility at the Harvard Forest. The latter is now named the John G. Torrey Laboratory.

Because of his research interests, his personal and professional associations with Professor Martin Zimmermann (then Director of the Harvard Forest) and Professor P. B. Tomlinson (the other senior faculty member at the Forest), and his concern for the future of the Harvard Forest, John Torrey moved his laboratory to the Forest in 1970. Upon Professor Zimmermann's untimely death in 1984, John Torrey was appointed Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Director of the Harvard Forest. He remained in that position until 1990. He had a great impact on the Harvard Forest: from initiating Freshman Seminars there to organizing a consortium of scientists from several universities to conduct research at the Forest. The latter led to the award of a large grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a Long Term Ecological Research Site. John Torrey, the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research and the National Science Foundation all contributed to a major strengthening of the Forest. These effects on the Forest must stand among John Torrey's most important enduring entrepreneurial contributions to the University and the scientific community.

At a memorial service for John Torrey about a year ago, his daughter Joanna read a touching piece entitled "My Father, The Collector." It told of his enthusiasm for collecting botanical specimens, old fashioned long-handled drugstore soda spoons and the locations of blue-plate lunch restaurants in the neighborhoods or towns in which he liked to collect. But his particular collecting ardor was saved for British, Scottish and New England etchings from the period of about 1880 to 1930. In his retirement, he planned to study, and to write about, "the interaction, interplay and influence of the group of British etchers on the Americans and vice versa."

John Torrey was outspoken and, in his controlled way, passionate about what he thought was right and what he thought was unjust and thus wrong. This is reflected in his comments on certain aspects of the management of endowment funds by the University in a personal chapter he wrote in 1994 in his short volume on the "History of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research of Harvard University, 1937-1987." He was concerned with the ethics of science and, more, always concerned with the ethics of people in dealing with one another. He is a man to miss.

David R. Foster

Reed C. Rollins

Otto T. Solbrig

Kenneth V. Thimann

Philip Barry Tomlinson

Lawrence Bogorad, Chairman

 

---

Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Arthur T. Hertig

Arthur Tremain Hertig, HMS '30, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy, Emeritus, died suddenly on July 20th, 1990, in his 86th year after a distinguished, varied, and colorful scientific career, much of it spent in association with Harvard Medical School.

Born in Minneapolis, he was initially attracted toward a career in entomology, and indeed began his scientific career as a high school senior working part-time in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. He later wrote that the "vista of science opened for me. At 40 cents an hour the pay and intellectual climate were better than working in a bakery-ice cream establishment," -- where he had worked previously -- "good though that was." His elder brother, Marshall, was an entomologist and no doubt this played a role in Dr. Hertig's life-long interest in entomology; in later years, he termed himself a "pseudo-entomologist." Entomology was pursued as a means of financial support in college and later in medical school. A greatly admired family physician led Hertig to study medicine at the University of Minnesota. Following his freshman year, the lure of entomology drew him to take a two year leave of absence from medical school to work with Marshall in China at the Peking Union Medical College. During the course of his work as Marshall's assistant in field studies on the insect transmission of Kala Azar, the brothers devised an ingenious method for artificially feeding sand flies (the insect vector now known to transmit Kala Azar), and to infect them with Leishmania donovani, the causative agent. The technique was reported in Science in 1927 and was the first of Dr. Hertig's many and diverse scientific papers; he was always proud of this particular publication. Fortuitously, Dr. David L. Edsall, then Dean of the Harvard Medical School, was in China at that time, and young Hertig had the opportunity of demonstrating (with the last captive sand fly of the season!) his technique. Dean Edsall was so impressed with the procedure and its inventor that he invited Hertig to transfer to Harvard Medical School to continue his medical studies, which he did in 1928 (luckily for HMS) after completing his second year in Minnesota.

At that time S. Burt Wolbach, the IVth Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy at HMS and Pathologist-in-Chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was carrying out his authoritative investigations on diseases caused by rickettsiae and their transmission by insects. Naturally, with his interest in entomology, Hertig was drawn to work with Dr. Wolbach and was hired in 1929 to spend a summer of field research with him on Naushon Island and Martha's Vineyard, working on a project to control wood ticks. Hertig's interest in pathology was piqued by his contact with Dr. Wolbach, so, after he graduated M.D. in 1930, he started training as a house officer in pathology at the Peter Bent Brigham. With barely eight months of formal training under his belt, Dr. Hertig was invited by Dr. Wolbach to establish the first pathology laboratory at the former Boston Lying-in Hospital. The invitation was extended while Drs. Wolbach, Farber and Hertig were walking down Longwood Avenue on Valentine's Day, 1931. Fortunately, Dr. Hertig paid no heed to some of his peers who advised him that there was no future in obstetric pathology as reproduction and childbirth were normal, physiologic phenomena -- furthermore, as he pointed out, this was a paying job in the Depression.

In 1933 a one year National Research Council Fellowship in Embryology enabled Dr. Hertig to study at the Carnegie Institute in Baltimore, under the eminent embryologist George L. Streeter. There was a two-fold outcome of his sojourn in Baltimore: a lifelong interest in early human development and in obstetric and gynecologic pathology, and a masterly and beautifully illustrated opus published in 1935, on the cellular events involved in angiogenesis in early human and Macaque monkey placentas. It was also at the Carnegie that Dr. Hertig, "as an interested onlooker", learned a technique developed there of isolating early fertilized ova from primates. This experience was to have enormous consequences in his research some years later. On his return to Boston, Dr. Hertig completed his training in pathology under Dr. Sidney Farber at the Children's Hospital, and was appointed assistant pathologist at the Boston Lying-in Hospital. In addition, on the advice and urging of Frederick C. Irving, Richardson Professor of Obstetrics, he simultaneously undertook full-scale training in obstetrics and gynecology -- no mean feat -- and was later certified a diplomate by both the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Pathology in 1944 and 1946 respectively. Although initially Dr. Hertig was an Instructor in Pathology for six years, by 1948 he had risen to the rank of Professor and pathologist at the two Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals for obstetrics and gynecology, the Boston Lying-in Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women. In 1952, he was appointed Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Chair of the Department of Pathology, positions which he held for 18 and 16 years respectively. In order to return to full-time research, he resigned somewhat ahead of time from the Chair, joining the staff of the New England Primate Center in Southborough, Massachusetts, as Chief of the Division of Pathobiology, (whilst, he said, "I still have all my buttons."). Dr. Hertig became Emeritus in 1974, but continued to work at the Primate Center virtually until his death.

Dr. Hertig often talked about the role of chance in his life, but clearly, in accord with Pasteur's aphorism, chance favored his prepared mind. A further instance of this in Dr. Hertig's career was when he became pathologist at the Free Hospital for Women in 1938, and began his long-standing collaboration, describing the early human ovum, with Dr. John Rock, HMS '18; the egg-harvesting techniques he had observed at the Carnegie for collecting ova now bore fruit. Drs. Hertig and Rock collected 34 normal and abnormal human ova from uteri and fallopian tubes removed for gynecologic disease. These ova were studied in fastidious detail in a series of ageless papers published over a span of fifteen years. These studies included the first description of the earliest stage of human development, the two-cell ovum, which appears in all major textbooks of anatomy, embryology and gynecology. Only 34 of 210 egg-hunts were successful! Those who were present when an "egg-hunt" was in progress marveled at the dedication, care, dexterity and patience displayed in finding the ovum, photographing it at the gross level, then serially sectioning it for microscopic analysis and reconstruction. These systematic studies, accomplished without formal grant support, were basic to the subsequent development of current management of infertile patients and our ability to transplant fertilized ova.

Being a sports fan, Dr. Hertig would not infrequently claim that the successful conclusion of the hunt occurred, for instance, at the very moment Ted Williams hit a home run, or at the moment Dominic DiMaggio tied the 1946 World Series for the Boston Red Sox with a double, and thus the appropriate sobriquet was attached to that particular ovum -- even if it turned out to be a "bad egg," a lost game, or a lost series.

Dr. Hertig's further scientific publications encompass the breadth of obstetric and gynecologic pathology. The early studies on angiogenesis in the early human chorion and in the primary placenta of the Macaque monkey formed the basis for analyses of abortuses, hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma. These reports are basic to our understanding of trophoblastic disease and its treatment. Dr. Hertig's monograph, Human Trophoblast, published in 1968, is the synthesis of his lifelong fascination with this tissue.

Alongside the trophoblastic studies, were fundamental and classic studies on dating the human endometrium in the menstrual cycle, and correlation of the endometrial patterns with corpus luteum development and function. Atypical endometrial patterns were correlated with the development of adenocarcinoma. Together with Paul Younge he worked on the interpretation of early abnormal changes in the cervix preceding the development of squamous cell carcinoma. Overall Dr. Hertig made pioneering and significant contributions in placental pathology, precancerous lesions of the endometrium and cervix, and trophoblastic disease. He wrote all three of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology fascicles dealing with female genital tract tumors. Nevertheless, he took the most pleasure in his studies of the early ovum. Through his research contributions, at a time when obstetric and gynecologic pathology in the USA was dominated by European-trained physicians, Dr. Hertig rose to be the first truly great native-trained pathologist in that subspecialty. Moreover, he was well-known as a caring and compassionate physician. His concern for patients, his wisdom and his vast expertise, made him highly regarded as a consultant on whom clinical colleagues markedly depended for guidance.

After retiring from the Chair of the Department of Pathology in 1968, Dr. Hertig moved his laboratory to the New England Primate Research Center where, with typical zest and curiosity, he focused his attention on nonhuman primate reproductive pathophysiology, and made some remarkable contributions, including investigations of the placental lesions associated with spontaneous abortion, vaginal adenosis, and the ultrastructure of ova.

Dr. Hertig's teaching is remembered by many HMS graduates. He loved introducing medical students to obstetric and gynecologic pathology, but did not neglect ensuring that other areas of pathology were properly covered. Many of the gross specimens and slides were personally inspected as to suitability for the students. His lectures were clear and concise, scholarly and logical, and laced with a delicious sense of humor, personal anecdotes and mordant wit. Dr. Hertig would tell the students that he was "just a hospital pathologist", and that he would lecture on the female reproductive tract, which was important because it was possessed by 50% of the population, and also because "it was the only thing he knew about." What was unique was that Dr. Hertig would sit in on lectures in the course, especially those given by the junior faculty. He would take pages of notes in longhand, just as a student would, and at the end of the lecture hand the notes to the lecturer, saying, "Well, this is what I understood. If I got it wrong, you'd better do something about it." He felt that successful teaching was couched in simple language.

His regard and concern for students was reflected in the fact that, for some years, he endeavored to have every student in the class, in a small group, to tea in his office. This was an enormous consumption of his time, but was a vivid reflection of his concern for students and for teaching. In fact, on two occasions, Dr. Hertig received the highest award at HMS, given by the students themselves, for excellence in teaching, and was made an honorary member of one the graduating classes -- a signal recognition of his interest in students.

After the completion of teaching on Friday mornings, the faculty would meet in the department for lunch. Seated at the head of a long table, Dr. Hertig would regale the company with aphorisms, stories, jokes and pearls of wisdom. In reference to his own career he was fond of saying "I have gone a long way on a few dozen eggs and a bunch of grapes" -- the latter referring to his work on hydatidiform moles. Other favorite phrases were "the morphology, the more fun" (bad puns did not faze him). He would aver that there was little correlation between quality of work and fanciness of laboratory surroundings and equipment. Reflecting on his own research, accomplished without high technology, he stated: "We need high-powered thinking with low-powered tools." Certainly his own major tool was the dissecting microscope. He referred to a luncheon party that he hosted for John Rock, his long-time friend and collaborator, as the "Hertig-Rock festival." His faculty and residents were always eager to hear his words and laugh with him at pomposity. He would recount progress on the refurbishing of his wooden sailboat, including bending the ribs, an art which he had learnt from a carpenter at the medical school. Sailing was his main hobby, relished at his summer home in Gloucester, Mass. A whale washed up on his beach one year, and the saga of having it removed -- all officialdom disclaiming responsibility -- entertained his listeners for weeks; some accused him of deliberately arranging the beaching as a conversation piece! His adventures in China must have led to a liking for Chinese food: he would expound on and demonstrate the use of chopsticks.

He loved words, their twists of meaning and their sound, and would insist on correct and euphonious usage, which entailed frequent consulting of dictionaries and thesauri. On accepting the highest award of the American Association of Pathologists, the Gold-Headed Cane, he said he was both "astounded" and "surprised" -- astounded by the honor, and surprised when he heard of it. He then discoursed learnedly on the differences in precise meaning of these words. He quoted the anecdote concerning Dr. Samuel Johnson, discovered by his wife kissing the maid. Johnson's wife exclaimed: "Why, Dr. Johnson, I am surprised." Said Johnson, "On the contrary, madame, you are astounded; I am surprised!" Dr. Hertig wittily pointed out that actually "surprise" and "astound" can be in some senses synonymous, which leaves us "a bit confused, as undoubtedly, both the wife and Dr. Johnson were, not to mention the maid herself." Paradoxically, he disliked writing papers, agonized over them: nevertheless, he has some 200 papers to his name. He spent hours going over manuscripts and grant applications of junior faculty. The writings of E.B. White, particularly Stuart Little, were much quoted.

Happenings in his science as well as in his personal life were described in vivid terms. In his biographic sketch, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1973, he synopsized his career as "forty years in the female pelvis -- a case of prolonged dystocia." Many will remember his exhortation when life looked gloomy -- "Be of good cheer!"

Dr. Hertig took an active leadership role in many professional societies. These included inter alia, President of the American Board of Pathology, the New England Society of Pathology, the New England Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, Governor of the College of American Pathologists, and a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Consultants to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

He received many awards and honors: among these were election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, corecipient with John Rock of the American Gynecological Society Award, the Ward Burdick Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology, Distinguished Service Awards from the College of American Pathologists, the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (also elected an Honorary Fellow), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (which also inducted him into their Hall of Fame), the American Gynecological Society, and from the International Academy of Pathology, the Distinguished Pathologist Award. The American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists gave him its most prestigious award, the "Gold-Headed Cane"; and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London, elected him an honorary ad eundem fellow (only one American a year can be so honored).

It was typical of the man that in a published speech "On Accepting An Award," he declared, in tribute to his teachers, "Pigmaei gigantum humerus impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident" -- pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.

Many are those who have stood on Dr. Hertig's shoulders, and have become well-known and successful in their own right. A ruddy-faced, rather bluff man, Dr. Hertig revealed, on acquaintance, an outgoing, kind and sensitive persona. Generous with his time and wisdom, his teaching of fellows and residents was vivid, full of wit and whimsy, and laced with countless humorous anecdotes. When he viewed something through the microscope that was distinctive but not familiar, he would say: "This is a classic example of whatever it is!" An inspiring, tireless and kind teacher of residents and fellows, he could not stand cant and pomposity, stating: "One must take the job but not one's self seriously."

Dr. Hertig, his beloved wife, Linda, on whom he was greatly dependent, and their two children, Helen and Andrew, led a happy, close-knit home life. Many students, residents and faculty will remember gracious hospitality at their homes in Winchester and Mussel Point, Gloucester, Mass., and numerous kind gestures of helpful interest in their personal lives. Tragedy struck in 1983 when Helen and her younger daughter were killed in a plane crash; in 1988, Linda died. Dr. Hertig bore these blows with fortitude, sustained by his strong religious faith, and supported by Andrew and his family, and Helen's children. His later years were clouded by severe arthritis, and his second marriage to Frances Thomas lasted unfortunately but a few happy months.

Dr. Hertig's contributions to science and medicine are imperishable; his impression on our minds and hearts as a teacher, leader, colleague and friend is indelible.

Respectfully submitted by:

Morris J. Karnovsky, Chair

Kurt Benirschke

George Th. Diamandopoulos

Shirley Driscoll

Robert Ehrmann

Hazel Gore

Lorna Johnson

Norval King

Hermann Lisco

Guido Majno

Robert Scully

February 1, 1996

John Gordon Torrey was a wise, sober man of great determination and high principle -- truthful, straightforward, honest and fair. He brought these attributes to all of his professional judgments and personal relationships.

John Gordon Torrey was the son of the Philadelphia banker W. Edward Torrey and his wife Elsie (Gordon) Torrey. He was born in Philadelphia on February 22, 1921, the third of four children and the second son in the family. He received his B.A. at Williams College in 1942. Then he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as an officer in the Medical Administrative Corps with the 317th Station Hospital in the U.S. and in the European Theatre. Professor Kenneth Thimann recalls that John Torrey came to Harvard while still in uniform and was the first graduate student to come into the Biology Department after World War II. Professor Thimann supervised John Torrey's graduate research; Professor Ralph Wetmore provided additional guidance. After receiving an M.A. from Harvard in 1947, he was awarded a traveling fellowship that enabled him to spend the year 1948-49 at Cambridge University's Botany School. In 1949, in England, he was married to Noreen Lea-Wilson with whom he had become acquainted during his military service in England a few years earlier. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree by Harvard in 1950 but before that time, in 1949, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He remained on the Berkeley faculty until July of 1960 when he took up a Professorship in the Biology Department at Harvard. He retired in 1991 and died on the 7th of January 1993. His remarkable determination and strength of character was evident through his last days. Published obituaries noted that he was survived by his wife, Noreen, and five daughters -- Jennifer, Joanna, Susan, Sarah and Carolyn. Those obituaries failed to note that he was also survived by his teacher, K. V. Thimann, as well as scores of admiring colleagues and former students.

John Torrey identified the subject of his more than fifty year-long research career -- the growth and development of roots -- while an undergraduate at Williams. In his undergraduate research at Williams and then in his Ph. D. research at Harvard, he investigated the role of the plant growth hormone indoleacetic acid on the initiation of branch roots from single cells in the pericyle, a one cell-thick tissue deep in the root. His Harvard Ph. D. thesis reflected Professor Thimann's emphasis on plant physiology and Professor Ralph Wetmore's interest and experience in studying the formation and differentiation of plant tissues and organs. During the 1950's at Berkeley, John Torrey continued to study root morphogenesis; his research papers and reviews are the foundations of much of contemporary experimental root biology.

Starting in the mid-1950s he became interested in nitrogen fixation in plants. The roots of legumes produce nodules inhabited by a form of the Rhizobium bacterium. In the nodules, energy supplied by the plant, in the form of products of photosynthesis, is used to convert atmospheric nitrogen into building blocks for plant proteins. By the mid-1970s nodule formation had become the major subject of John Torrey's research. Some shrubs and trees have nodules that fix atmospheric nitrogen but do not contain Rhizobium bacteria. Such nodules were called mycorrhiza because everyone was certain that a fungus was the plant's partner in nodule formation and nitrogen fixation but the microorganism had never been isolated. All of this changed in 1978 when John Torrey and his coworkers D. Callaham and P. Del Tredici reported that they had isolated from "mycorrhizae" and cultivated in vitro not a fungus but the actinomycete Frankia and showed that it is the nitrogen fixing partner of the nonlegume Comptonia. A new field of research was born because of this information and the availability of Frankia in culture. In the period from 1978 to 1991, John Torrey's laboratory alone published more than 70 papers on aspects of the development and structure of Frankia nodules in actinorrhizal plants.

John Torrey's contributions to science were recognized by many invitations to speak and by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, to the Presidency of the Society for Developmental Biology in 1963, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. His wisdom and good judgment were recognized by his appointment to numerous advisory posts and editorial positions.

Five years after he joined the Harvard faculty, John Torrey was appointed the fifth Director of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research. He retained this position for 10 years. At his initiative the Foundation funded the construction of a much needed expansion of the University's herbaria and the establishment of the Controlled Environment Facility at the Harvard Forest. The latter is now named the John G. Torrey Laboratory.

Because of his research interests, his personal and professional associations with Professor Martin Zimmermann (then Director of the Harvard Forest) and Professor P. B. Tomlinson (the other senior faculty member at the Forest), and his concern for the future of the Harvard Forest, John Torrey moved his laboratory to the Forest in 1970. Upon Professor Zimmermann's untimely death in 1984, John Torrey was appointed Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Director of the Harvard Forest. He remained in that position until 1990. He had a great impact on the Harvard Forest: from initiating Freshman Seminars there to organizing a consortium of scientists from several universities to conduct research at the Forest. The latter led to the award of a large grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a Long Term Ecological Research Site. John Torrey, the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research and the National Science Foundation all contributed to a major strengthening of the Forest. These effects on the Forest must stand among John Torrey's most important enduring entrepreneurial contributions to the University and the scientific community.

At a memorial service for John Torrey about a year ago, his daughter Joanna read a touching piece entitled "My Father, The Collector." It told of his enthusiasm for collecting botanical specimens, old fashioned long-handled drugstore soda spoons and the locations of blue-plate lunch restaurants in the neighborhoods or towns in which he liked to collect. But his particular collecting ardor was saved for British, Scottish and New England etchings from the period of about 1880 to 1930. In his retirement, he planned to study, and to write about, "the interaction, interplay and influence of the group of British etchers on the Americans and vice versa."

John Torrey was outspoken and, in his controlled way, passionate about what he thought was right and what he thought was unjust and thus wrong. This is reflected in his comments on certain aspects of the management of endowment funds by the University in a personal chapter he wrote in 1994 in his short volume on the "History of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research of Harvard University, 1937-1987." He was concerned with the ethics of science and, more, always concerned with the ethics of people in dealing with one another. He is a man to miss.

David R. Foster

Reed C. Rollins

Otto T. Solbrig

Kenneth V. Thimann

Philip Barry Tomlinson

Lawrence Bogorad, Chairman

 

---

Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Arthur T. Hertig

Arthur Tremain Hertig, HMS '30, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy, Emeritus, died suddenly on July 20th, 1990, in his 86th year after a distinguished, varied, and colorful scientific career, much of it spent in association with Harvard Medical School.

Born in Minneapolis, he was initially attracted toward a career in entomology, and indeed began his scientific career as a high school senior working part-time in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. He later wrote that the "vista of science opened for me. At 40 cents an hour the pay and intellectual climate were better than working in a bakery-ice cream establishment," -- where he had worked previously -- "good though that was." His elder brother, Marshall, was an entomologist and no doubt this played a role in Dr. Hertig's life-long interest in entomology; in later years, he termed himself a "pseudo-entomologist." Entomology was pursued as a means of financial support in college and later in medical school. A greatly admired family physician led Hertig to study medicine at the University of Minnesota. Following his freshman year, the lure of entomology drew him to take a two year leave of absence from medical school to work with Marshall in China at the Peking Union Medical College. During the course of his work as Marshall's assistant in field studies on the insect transmission of Kala Azar, the brothers devised an ingenious method for artificially feeding sand flies (the insect vector now known to transmit Kala Azar), and to infect them with Leishmania donovani, the causative agent. The technique was reported in Science in 1927 and was the first of Dr. Hertig's many and diverse scientific papers; he was always proud of this particular publication. Fortuitously, Dr. David L. Edsall, then Dean of the Harvard Medical School, was in China at that time, and young Hertig had the opportunity of demonstrating (with the last captive sand fly of the season!) his technique. Dean Edsall was so impressed with the procedure and its inventor that he invited Hertig to transfer to Harvard Medical School to continue his medical studies, which he did in 1928 (luckily for HMS) after completing his second year in Minnesota.

At that time S. Burt Wolbach, the IVth Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy at HMS and Pathologist-in-Chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was carrying out his authoritative investigations on diseases caused by rickettsiae and their transmission by insects. Naturally, with his interest in entomology, Hertig was drawn to work with Dr. Wolbach and was hired in 1929 to spend a summer of field research with him on Naushon Island and Martha's Vineyard, working on a project to control wood ticks. Hertig's interest in pathology was piqued by his contact with Dr. Wolbach, so, after he graduated M.D. in 1930, he started training as a house officer in pathology at the Peter Bent Brigham. With barely eight months of formal training under his belt, Dr. Hertig was invited by Dr. Wolbach to establish the first pathology laboratory at the former Boston Lying-in Hospital. The invitation was extended while Drs. Wolbach, Farber and Hertig were walking down Longwood Avenue on Valentine's Day, 1931. Fortunately, Dr. Hertig paid no heed to some of his peers who advised him that there was no future in obstetric pathology as reproduction and childbirth were normal, physiologic phenomena -- furthermore, as he pointed out, this was a paying job in the Depression.

In 1933 a one year National Research Council Fellowship in Embryology enabled Dr. Hertig to study at the Carnegie Institute in Baltimore, under the eminent embryologist George L. Streeter. There was a two-fold outcome of his sojourn in Baltimore: a lifelong interest in early human development and in obstetric and gynecologic pathology, and a masterly and beautifully illustrated opus published in 1935, on the cellular events involved in angiogenesis in early human and Macaque monkey placentas. It was also at the Carnegie that Dr. Hertig, "as an interested onlooker", learned a technique developed there of isolating early fertilized ova from primates. This experience was to have enormous consequences in his research some years later. On his return to Boston, Dr. Hertig completed his training in pathology under Dr. Sidney Farber at the Children's Hospital, and was appointed assistant pathologist at the Boston Lying-in Hospital. In addition, on the advice and urging of Frederick C. Irving, Richardson Professor of Obstetrics, he simultaneously undertook full-scale training in obstetrics and gynecology -- no mean feat -- and was later certified a diplomate by both the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Pathology in 1944 and 1946 respectively. Although initially Dr. Hertig was an Instructor in Pathology for six years, by 1948 he had risen to the rank of Professor and pathologist at the two Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals for obstetrics and gynecology, the Boston Lying-in Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women. In 1952, he was appointed Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Chair of the Department of Pathology, positions which he held for 18 and 16 years respectively. In order to return to full-time research, he resigned somewhat ahead of time from the Chair, joining the staff of the New England Primate Center in Southborough, Massachusetts, as Chief of the Division of Pathobiology, (whilst, he said, "I still have all my buttons."). Dr. Hertig became Emeritus in 1974, but continued to work at the Primate Center virtually until his death.

Dr. Hertig often talked about the role of chance in his life, but clearly, in accord with Pasteur's aphorism, chance favored his prepared mind. A further instance of this in Dr. Hertig's career was when he became pathologist at the Free Hospital for Women in 1938, and began his long-standing collaboration, describing the early human ovum, with Dr. John Rock, HMS '18; the egg-harvesting techniques he had observed at the Carnegie for collecting ova now bore fruit. Drs. Hertig and Rock collected 34 normal and abnormal human ova from uteri and fallopian tubes removed for gynecologic disease. These ova were studied in fastidious detail in a series of ageless papers published over a span of fifteen years. These studies included the first description of the earliest stage of human development, the two-cell ovum, which appears in all major textbooks of anatomy, embryology and gynecology. Only 34 of 210 egg-hunts were successful! Those who were present when an "egg-hunt" was in progress marveled at the dedication, care, dexterity and patience displayed in finding the ovum, photographing it at the gross level, then serially sectioning it for microscopic analysis and reconstruction. These systematic studies, accomplished without formal grant support, were basic to the subsequent development of current management of infertile patients and our ability to transplant fertilized ova.

Being a sports fan, Dr. Hertig would not infrequently claim that the successful conclusion of the hunt occurred, for instance, at the very moment Ted Williams hit a home run, or at the moment Dominic DiMaggio tied the 1946 World Series for the Boston Red Sox with a double, and thus the appropriate sobriquet was attached to that particular ovum -- even if it turned out to be a "bad egg," a lost game, or a lost series.

Dr. Hertig's further scientific publications encompass the breadth of obstetric and gynecologic pathology. The early studies on angiogenesis in the early human chorion and in the primary placenta of the Macaque monkey formed the basis for analyses of abortuses, hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma. These reports are basic to our understanding of trophoblastic disease and its treatment. Dr. Hertig's monograph, Human Trophoblast, published in 1968, is the synthesis of his lifelong fascination with this tissue.

Alongside the trophoblastic studies, were fundamental and classic studies on dating the human endometrium in the menstrual cycle, and correlation of the endometrial patterns with corpus luteum development and function. Atypical endometrial patterns were correlated with the development of adenocarcinoma. Together with Paul Younge he worked on the interpretation of early abnormal changes in the cervix preceding the development of squamous cell carcinoma. Overall Dr. Hertig made pioneering and significant contributions in placental pathology, precancerous lesions of the endometrium and cervix, and trophoblastic disease. He wrote all three of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology fascicles dealing with female genital tract tumors. Nevertheless, he took the most pleasure in his studies of the early ovum. Through his research contributions, at a time when obstetric and gynecologic pathology in the USA was dominated by European-trained physicians, Dr. Hertig rose to be the first truly great native-trained pathologist in that subspecialty. Moreover, he was well-known as a caring and compassionate physician. His concern for patients, his wisdom and his vast expertise, made him highly regarded as a consultant on whom clinical colleagues markedly depended for guidance.

After retiring from the Chair of the Department of Pathology in 1968, Dr. Hertig moved his laboratory to the New England Primate Research Center where, with typical zest and curiosity, he focused his attention on nonhuman primate reproductive pathophysiology, and made some remarkable contributions, including investigations of the placental lesions associated with spontaneous abortion, vaginal adenosis, and the ultrastructure of ova.

Dr. Hertig's teaching is remembered by many HMS graduates. He loved introducing medical students to obstetric and gynecologic pathology, but did not neglect ensuring that other areas of pathology were properly covered. Many of the gross specimens and slides were personally inspected as to suitability for the students. His lectures were clear and concise, scholarly and logical, and laced with a delicious sense of humor, personal anecdotes and mordant wit. Dr. Hertig would tell the students that he was "just a hospital pathologist", and that he would lecture on the female reproductive tract, which was important because it was possessed by 50% of the population, and also because "it was the only thing he knew about." What was unique was that Dr. Hertig would sit in on lectures in the course, especially those given by the junior faculty. He would take pages of notes in longhand, just as a student would, and at the end of the lecture hand the notes to the lecturer, saying, "Well, this is what I understood. If I got it wrong, you'd better do something about it." He felt that successful teaching was couched in simple language.

His regard and concern for students was reflected in the fact that, for some years, he endeavored to have every student in the class, in a small group, to tea in his office. This was an enormous consumption of his time, but was a vivid reflection of his concern for students and for teaching. In fact, on two occasions, Dr. Hertig received the highest award at HMS, given by the students themselves, for excellence in teaching, and was made an honorary member of one the graduating classes -- a signal recognition of his interest in students.

After the completion of teaching on Friday mornings, the faculty would meet in the department for lunch. Seated at the head of a long table, Dr. Hertig would regale the company with aphorisms, stories, jokes and pearls of wisdom. In reference to his own career he was fond of saying "I have gone a long way on a few dozen eggs and a bunch of grapes" -- the latter referring to his work on hydatidiform moles. Other favorite phrases were "the morphology, the more fun" (bad puns did not faze him). He would aver that there was little correlation between quality of work and fanciness of laboratory surroundings and equipment. Reflecting on his own research, accomplished without high technology, he stated: "We need high-powered thinking with low-powered tools." Certainly his own major tool was the dissecting microscope. He referred to a luncheon party that he hosted for John Rock, his long-time friend and collaborator, as the "Hertig-Rock festival." His faculty and residents were always eager to hear his words and laugh with him at pomposity. He would recount progress on the refurbishing of his wooden sailboat, including bending the ribs, an art which he had learnt from a carpenter at the medical school. Sailing was his main hobby, relished at his summer home in Gloucester, Mass. A whale washed up on his beach one year, and the saga of having it removed -- all officialdom disclaiming responsibility -- entertained his listeners for weeks; some accused him of deliberately arranging the beaching as a conversation piece! His adventures in China must have led to a liking for Chinese food: he would expound on and demonstrate the use of chopsticks.

He loved words, their twists of meaning and their sound, and would insist on correct and euphonious usage, which entailed frequent consulting of dictionaries and thesauri. On accepting the highest award of the American Association of Pathologists, the Gold-Headed Cane, he said he was both "astounded" and "surprised" -- astounded by the honor, and surprised when he heard of it. He then discoursed learnedly on the differences in precise meaning of these words. He quoted the anecdote concerning Dr. Samuel Johnson, discovered by his wife kissing the maid. Johnson's wife exclaimed: "Why, Dr. Johnson, I am surprised." Said Johnson, "On the contrary, madame, you are astounded; I am surprised!" Dr. Hertig wittily pointed out that actually "surprise" and "astound" can be in some senses synonymous, which leaves us "a bit confused, as undoubtedly, both the wife and Dr. Johnson were, not to mention the maid herself." Paradoxically, he disliked writing papers, agonized over them: nevertheless, he has some 200 papers to his name. He spent hours going over manuscripts and grant applications of junior faculty. The writings of E.B. White, particularly Stuart Little, were much quoted.

Happenings in his science as well as in his personal life were described in vivid terms. In his biographic sketch, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1973, he synopsized his career as "forty years in the female pelvis -- a case of prolonged dystocia." Many will remember his exhortation when life looked gloomy -- "Be of good cheer!"

Dr. Hertig took an active leadership role in many professional societies. These included inter alia, President of the American Board of Pathology, the New England Society of Pathology, the New England Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, Governor of the College of American Pathologists, and a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Consultants to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

He received many awards and honors: among these were election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, corecipient with John Rock of the American Gynecological Society Award, the Ward Burdick Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology, Distinguished Service Awards from the College of American Pathologists, the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (also elected an Honorary Fellow), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (which also inducted him into their Hall of Fame), the American Gynecological Society, and from the International Academy of Pathology, the Distinguished Pathologist Award. The American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists gave him its most prestigious award, the "Gold-Headed Cane"; and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London, elected him an honorary ad eundem fellow (only one American a year can be so honored).

It was typical of the man that in a published speech "On Accepting An Award," he declared, in tribute to his teachers, "Pigmaei gigantum humerus impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident" -- pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.

Many are those who have stood on Dr. Hertig's shoulders, and have become well-known and successful in their own right. A ruddy-faced, rather bluff man, Dr. Hertig revealed, on acquaintance, an outgoing, kind and sensitive persona. Generous with his time and wisdom, his teaching of fellows and residents was vivid, full of wit and whimsy, and laced with countless humorous anecdotes. When he viewed something through the microscope that was distinctive but not familiar, he would say: "This is a classic example of whatever it is!" An inspiring, tireless and kind teacher of residents and fellows, he could not stand cant and pomposity, stating: "One must take the job but not one's self seriously."

Dr. Hertig, his beloved wife, Linda, on whom he was greatly dependent, and their two children, Helen and Andrew, led a happy, close-knit home life. Many students, residents and faculty will remember gracious hospitality at their homes in Winchester and Mussel Point, Gloucester, Mass., and numerous kind gestures of helpful interest in their personal lives. Tragedy struck in 1983 when Helen and her younger daughter were killed in a plane crash; in 1988, Linda died. Dr. Hertig bore these blows with fortitude, sustained by his strong religious faith, and supported by Andrew and his family, and Helen's children. His later years were clouded by severe arthritis, and his second marriage to Frances Thomas lasted unfortunately but a few happy months.

Dr. Hertig's contributions to science and medicine are imperishable; his impression on our minds and hearts as a teacher, leader, colleague and friend is indelible.

Respectfully submitted by:

Morris J. Karnovsky, Chair

Kurt Benirschke

George Th. Diamandopoulos

Shirley Driscoll

Robert Ehrmann

Hazel Gore

Lorna Johnson

Norval King

Hermann Lisco

Guido Majno

Robert Scully

February 1, 1996

John Gordon Torrey was a wise, sober man of great determination and high principle -- truthful, straightforward, honest and fair. He brought these attributes to all of his professional judgments and personal relationships.

John Gordon Torrey was the son of the Philadelphia banker W. Edward Torrey and his wife Elsie (Gordon) Torrey. He was born in Philadelphia on February 22, 1921, the third of four children and the second son in the family. He received his B.A. at Williams College in 1942. Then he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as an officer in the Medical Administrative Corps with the 317th Station Hospital in the U.S. and in the European Theatre. Professor Kenneth Thimann recalls that John Torrey came to Harvard while still in uniform and was the first graduate student to come into the Biology Department after World War II. Professor Thimann supervised John Torrey's graduate research; Professor Ralph Wetmore provided additional guidance. After receiving an M.A. from Harvard in 1947, he was awarded a traveling fellowship that enabled him to spend the year 1948-49 at Cambridge University's Botany School. In 1949, in England, he was married to Noreen Lea-Wilson with whom he had become acquainted during his military service in England a few years earlier. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree by Harvard in 1950 but before that time, in 1949, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He remained on the Berkeley faculty until July of 1960 when he took up a Professorship in the Biology Department at Harvard. He retired in 1991 and died on the 7th of January 1993. His remarkable determination and strength of character was evident through his last days. Published obituaries noted that he was survived by his wife, Noreen, and five daughters -- Jennifer, Joanna, Susan, Sarah and Carolyn. Those obituaries failed to note that he was also survived by his teacher, K. V. Thimann, as well as scores of admiring colleagues and former students.

John Torrey identified the subject of his more than fifty year-long research career -- the growth and development of roots -- while an undergraduate at Williams. In his undergraduate research at Williams and then in his Ph. D. research at Harvard, he investigated the role of the plant growth hormone indoleacetic acid on the initiation of branch roots from single cells in the pericyle, a one cell-thick tissue deep in the root. His Harvard Ph. D. thesis reflected Professor Thimann's emphasis on plant physiology and Professor Ralph Wetmore's interest and experience in studying the formation and differentiation of plant tissues and organs. During the 1950's at Berkeley, John Torrey continued to study root morphogenesis; his research papers and reviews are the foundations of much of contemporary experimental root biology.

Starting in the mid-1950s he became interested in nitrogen fixation in plants. The roots of legumes produce nodules inhabited by a form of the Rhizobium bacterium. In the nodules, energy supplied by the plant, in the form of products of photosynthesis, is used to convert atmospheric nitrogen into building blocks for plant proteins. By the mid-1970s nodule formation had become the major subject of John Torrey's research. Some shrubs and trees have nodules that fix atmospheric nitrogen but do not contain Rhizobium bacteria. Such nodules were called mycorrhiza because everyone was certain that a fungus was the plant's partner in nodule formation and nitrogen fixation but the microorganism had never been isolated. All of this changed in 1978 when John Torrey and his coworkers D. Callaham and P. Del Tredici reported that they had isolated from "mycorrhizae" and cultivated in vitro not a fungus but the actinomycete Frankia and showed that it is the nitrogen fixing partner of the nonlegume Comptonia. A new field of research was born because of this information and the availability of Frankia in culture. In the period from 1978 to 1991, John Torrey's laboratory alone published more than 70 papers on aspects of the development and structure of Frankia nodules in actinorrhizal plants.

John Torrey's contributions to science were recognized by many invitations to speak and by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, to the Presidency of the Society for Developmental Biology in 1963, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. His wisdom and good judgment were recognized by his appointment to numerous advisory posts and editorial positions.

Five years after he joined the Harvard faculty, John Torrey was appointed the fifth Director of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research. He retained this position for 10 years. At his initiative the Foundation funded the construction of a much needed expansion of the University's herbaria and the establishment of the Controlled Environment Facility at the Harvard Forest. The latter is now named the John G. Torrey Laboratory.

Because of his research interests, his personal and professional associations with Professor Martin Zimmermann (then Director of the Harvard Forest) and Professor P. B. Tomlinson (the other senior faculty member at the Forest), and his concern for the future of the Harvard Forest, John Torrey moved his laboratory to the Forest in 1970. Upon Professor Zimmermann's untimely death in 1984, John Torrey was appointed Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Director of the Harvard Forest. He remained in that position until 1990. He had a great impact on the Harvard Forest: from initiating Freshman Seminars there to organizing a consortium of scientists from several universities to conduct research at the Forest. The latter led to the award of a large grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a Long Term Ecological Research Site. John Torrey, the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research and the National Science Foundation all contributed to a major strengthening of the Forest. These effects on the Forest must stand among John Torrey's most important enduring entrepreneurial contributions to the University and the scientific community.

At a memorial service for John Torrey about a year ago, his daughter Joanna read a touching piece entitled "My Father, The Collector." It told of his enthusiasm for collecting botanical specimens, old fashioned long-handled drugstore soda spoons and the locations of blue-plate lunch restaurants in the neighborhoods or towns in which he liked to collect. But his particular collecting ardor was saved for British, Scottish and New England etchings from the period of about 1880 to 1930. In his retirement, he planned to study, and to write about, "the interaction, interplay and influence of the group of British etchers on the Americans and vice versa."

John Torrey was outspoken and, in his controlled way, passionate about what he thought was right and what he thought was unjust and thus wrong. This is reflected in his comments on certain aspects of the management of endowment funds by the University in a personal chapter he wrote in 1994 in his short volume on the "History of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research of Harvard University, 1937-1987." He was concerned with the ethics of science and, more, always concerned with the ethics of people in dealing with one another. He is a man to miss.

David R. Foster

Reed C. Rollins

Otto T. Solbrig

Kenneth V. Thimann

Philip Barry Tomlinson

Lawrence Bogorad, Chairman

 

---

Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Arthur T. Hertig

Arthur Tremain Hertig, HMS '30, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy, Emeritus, died suddenly on July 20th, 1990, in his 86th year after a distinguished, varied, and colorful scientific career, much of it spent in association with Harvard Medical School.

Born in Minneapolis, he was initially attracted toward a career in entomology, and indeed began his scientific career as a high school senior working part-time in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. He later wrote that the "vista of science opened for me. At 40 cents an hour the pay and intellectual climate were better than working in a bakery-ice cream establishment," -- where he had worked previously -- "good though that was." His elder brother, Marshall, was an entomologist and no doubt this played a role in Dr. Hertig's life-long interest in entomology; in later years, he termed himself a "pseudo-entomologist." Entomology was pursued as a means of financial support in college and later in medical school. A greatly admired family physician led Hertig to study medicine at the University of Minnesota. Following his freshman year, the lure of entomology drew him to take a two year leave of absence from medical school to work with Marshall in China at the Peking Union Medical College. During the course of his work as Marshall's assistant in field studies on the insect transmission of Kala Azar, the brothers devised an ingenious method for artificially feeding sand flies (the insect vector now known to transmit Kala Azar), and to infect them with Leishmania donovani, the causative agent. The technique was reported in Science in 1927 and was the first of Dr. Hertig's many and diverse scientific papers; he was always proud of this particular publication. Fortuitously, Dr. David L. Edsall, then Dean of the Harvard Medical School, was in China at that time, and young Hertig had the opportunity of demonstrating (with the last captive sand fly of the season!) his technique. Dean Edsall was so impressed with the procedure and its inventor that he invited Hertig to transfer to Harvard Medical School to continue his medical studies, which he did in 1928 (luckily for HMS) after completing his second year in Minnesota.

At that time S. Burt Wolbach, the IVth Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy at HMS and Pathologist-in-Chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was carrying out his authoritative investigations on diseases caused by rickettsiae and their transmission by insects. Naturally, with his interest in entomology, Hertig was drawn to work with Dr. Wolbach and was hired in 1929 to spend a summer of field research with him on Naushon Island and Martha's Vineyard, working on a project to control wood ticks. Hertig's interest in pathology was piqued by his contact with Dr. Wolbach, so, after he graduated M.D. in 1930, he started training as a house officer in pathology at the Peter Bent Brigham. With barely eight months of formal training under his belt, Dr. Hertig was invited by Dr. Wolbach to establish the first pathology laboratory at the former Boston Lying-in Hospital. The invitation was extended while Drs. Wolbach, Farber and Hertig were walking down Longwood Avenue on Valentine's Day, 1931. Fortunately, Dr. Hertig paid no heed to some of his peers who advised him that there was no future in obstetric pathology as reproduction and childbirth were normal, physiologic phenomena -- furthermore, as he pointed out, this was a paying job in the Depression.

In 1933 a one year National Research Council Fellowship in Embryology enabled Dr. Hertig to study at the Carnegie Institute in Baltimore, under the eminent embryologist George L. Streeter. There was a two-fold outcome of his sojourn in Baltimore: a lifelong interest in early human development and in obstetric and gynecologic pathology, and a masterly and beautifully illustrated opus published in 1935, on the cellular events involved in angiogenesis in early human and Macaque monkey placentas. It was also at the Carnegie that Dr. Hertig, "as an interested onlooker", learned a technique developed there of isolating early fertilized ova from primates. This experience was to have enormous consequences in his research some years later. On his return to Boston, Dr. Hertig completed his training in pathology under Dr. Sidney Farber at the Children's Hospital, and was appointed assistant pathologist at the Boston Lying-in Hospital. In addition, on the advice and urging of Frederick C. Irving, Richardson Professor of Obstetrics, he simultaneously undertook full-scale training in obstetrics and gynecology -- no mean feat -- and was later certified a diplomate by both the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Pathology in 1944 and 1946 respectively. Although initially Dr. Hertig was an Instructor in Pathology for six years, by 1948 he had risen to the rank of Professor and pathologist at the two Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals for obstetrics and gynecology, the Boston Lying-in Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women. In 1952, he was appointed Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Chair of the Department of Pathology, positions which he held for 18 and 16 years respectively. In order to return to full-time research, he resigned somewhat ahead of time from the Chair, joining the staff of the New England Primate Center in Southborough, Massachusetts, as Chief of the Division of Pathobiology, (whilst, he said, "I still have all my buttons."). Dr. Hertig became Emeritus in 1974, but continued to work at the Primate Center virtually until his death.

Dr. Hertig often talked about the role of chance in his life, but clearly, in accord with Pasteur's aphorism, chance favored his prepared mind. A further instance of this in Dr. Hertig's career was when he became pathologist at the Free Hospital for Women in 1938, and began his long-standing collaboration, describing the early human ovum, with Dr. John Rock, HMS '18; the egg-harvesting techniques he had observed at the Carnegie for collecting ova now bore fruit. Drs. Hertig and Rock collected 34 normal and abnormal human ova from uteri and fallopian tubes removed for gynecologic disease. These ova were studied in fastidious detail in a series of ageless papers published over a span of fifteen years. These studies included the first description of the earliest stage of human development, the two-cell ovum, which appears in all major textbooks of anatomy, embryology and gynecology. Only 34 of 210 egg-hunts were successful! Those who were present when an "egg-hunt" was in progress marveled at the dedication, care, dexterity and patience displayed in finding the ovum, photographing it at the gross level, then serially sectioning it for microscopic analysis and reconstruction. These systematic studies, accomplished without formal grant support, were basic to the subsequent development of current management of infertile patients and our ability to transplant fertilized ova.

Being a sports fan, Dr. Hertig would not infrequently claim that the successful conclusion of the hunt occurred, for instance, at the very moment Ted Williams hit a home run, or at the moment Dominic DiMaggio tied the 1946 World Series for the Boston Red Sox with a double, and thus the appropriate sobriquet was attached to that particular ovum -- even if it turned out to be a "bad egg," a lost game, or a lost series.

Dr. Hertig's further scientific publications encompass the breadth of obstetric and gynecologic pathology. The early studies on angiogenesis in the early human chorion and in the primary placenta of the Macaque monkey formed the basis for analyses of abortuses, hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma. These reports are basic to our understanding of trophoblastic disease and its treatment. Dr. Hertig's monograph, Human Trophoblast, published in 1968, is the synthesis of his lifelong fascination with this tissue.

Alongside the trophoblastic studies, were fundamental and classic studies on dating the human endometrium in the menstrual cycle, and correlation of the endometrial patterns with corpus luteum development and function. Atypical endometrial patterns were correlated with the development of adenocarcinoma. Together with Paul Younge he worked on the interpretation of early abnormal changes in the cervix preceding the development of squamous cell carcinoma. Overall Dr. Hertig made pioneering and significant contributions in placental pathology, precancerous lesions of the endometrium and cervix, and trophoblastic disease. He wrote all three of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology fascicles dealing with female genital tract tumors. Nevertheless, he took the most pleasure in his studies of the early ovum. Through his research contributions, at a time when obstetric and gynecologic pathology in the USA was dominated by European-trained physicians, Dr. Hertig rose to be the first truly great native-trained pathologist in that subspecialty. Moreover, he was well-known as a caring and compassionate physician. His concern for patients, his wisdom and his vast expertise, made him highly regarded as a consultant on whom clinical colleagues markedly depended for guidance.

After retiring from the Chair of the Department of Pathology in 1968, Dr. Hertig moved his laboratory to the New England Primate Research Center where, with typical zest and curiosity, he focused his attention on nonhuman primate reproductive pathophysiology, and made some remarkable contributions, including investigations of the placental lesions associated with spontaneous abortion, vaginal adenosis, and the ultrastructure of ova.

Dr. Hertig's teaching is remembered by many HMS graduates. He loved introducing medical students to obstetric and gynecologic pathology, but did not neglect ensuring that other areas of pathology were properly covered. Many of the gross specimens and slides were personally inspected as to suitability for the students. His lectures were clear and concise, scholarly and logical, and laced with a delicious sense of humor, personal anecdotes and mordant wit. Dr. Hertig would tell the students that he was "just a hospital pathologist", and that he would lecture on the female reproductive tract, which was important because it was possessed by 50% of the population, and also because "it was the only thing he knew about." What was unique was that Dr. Hertig would sit in on lectures in the course, especially those given by the junior faculty. He would take pages of notes in longhand, just as a student would, and at the end of the lecture hand the notes to the lecturer, saying, "Well, this is what I understood. If I got it wrong, you'd better do something about it." He felt that successful teaching was couched in simple language.

His regard and concern for students was reflected in the fact that, for some years, he endeavored to have every student in the class, in a small group, to tea in his office. This was an enormous consumption of his time, but was a vivid reflection of his concern for students and for teaching. In fact, on two occasions, Dr. Hertig received the highest award at HMS, given by the students themselves, for excellence in teaching, and was made an honorary member of one the graduating classes -- a signal recognition of his interest in students.

After the completion of teaching on Friday mornings, the faculty would meet in the department for lunch. Seated at the head of a long table, Dr. Hertig would regale the company with aphorisms, stories, jokes and pearls of wisdom. In reference to his own career he was fond of saying "I have gone a long way on a few dozen eggs and a bunch of grapes" -- the latter referring to his work on hydatidiform moles. Other favorite phrases were "the morphology, the more fun" (bad puns did not faze him). He would aver that there was little correlation between quality of work and fanciness of laboratory surroundings and equipment. Reflecting on his own research, accomplished without high technology, he stated: "We need high-powered thinking with low-powered tools." Certainly his own major tool was the dissecting microscope. He referred to a luncheon party that he hosted for John Rock, his long-time friend and collaborator, as the "Hertig-Rock festival." His faculty and residents were always eager to hear his words and laugh with him at pomposity. He would recount progress on the refurbishing of his wooden sailboat, including bending the ribs, an art which he had learnt from a carpenter at the medical school. Sailing was his main hobby, relished at his summer home in Gloucester, Mass. A whale washed up on his beach one year, and the saga of having it removed -- all officialdom disclaiming responsibility -- entertained his listeners for weeks; some accused him of deliberately arranging the beaching as a conversation piece! His adventures in China must have led to a liking for Chinese food: he would expound on and demonstrate the use of chopsticks.

He loved words, their twists of meaning and their sound, and would insist on correct and euphonious usage, which entailed frequent consulting of dictionaries and thesauri. On accepting the highest award of the American Association of Pathologists, the Gold-Headed Cane, he said he was both "astounded" and "surprised" -- astounded by the honor, and surprised when he heard of it. He then discoursed learnedly on the differences in precise meaning of these words. He quoted the anecdote concerning Dr. Samuel Johnson, discovered by his wife kissing the maid. Johnson's wife exclaimed: "Why, Dr. Johnson, I am surprised." Said Johnson, "On the contrary, madame, you are astounded; I am surprised!" Dr. Hertig wittily pointed out that actually "surprise" and "astound" can be in some senses synonymous, which leaves us "a bit confused, as undoubtedly, both the wife and Dr. Johnson were, not to mention the maid herself." Paradoxically, he disliked writing papers, agonized over them: nevertheless, he has some 200 papers to his name. He spent hours going over manuscripts and grant applications of junior faculty. The writings of E.B. White, particularly Stuart Little, were much quoted.

Happenings in his science as well as in his personal life were described in vivid terms. In his biographic sketch, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1973, he synopsized his career as "forty years in the female pelvis -- a case of prolonged dystocia." Many will remember his exhortation when life looked gloomy -- "Be of good cheer!"

Dr. Hertig took an active leadership role in many professional societies. These included inter alia, President of the American Board of Pathology, the New England Society of Pathology, the New England Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, Governor of the College of American Pathologists, and a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Consultants to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

He received many awards and honors: among these were election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, corecipient with John Rock of the American Gynecological Society Award, the Ward Burdick Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology, Distinguished Service Awards from the College of American Pathologists, the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (also elected an Honorary Fellow), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (which also inducted him into their Hall of Fame), the American Gynecological Society, and from the International Academy of Pathology, the Distinguished Pathologist Award. The American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists gave him its most prestigious award, the "Gold-Headed Cane"; and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London, elected him an honorary ad eundem fellow (only one American a year can be so honored).

It was typical of the man that in a published speech "On Accepting An Award," he declared, in tribute to his teachers, "Pigmaei gigantum humerus impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident" -- pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.

Many are those who have stood on Dr. Hertig's shoulders, and have become well-known and successful in their own right. A ruddy-faced, rather bluff man, Dr. Hertig revealed, on acquaintance, an outgoing, kind and sensitive persona. Generous with his time and wisdom, his teaching of fellows and residents was vivid, full of wit and whimsy, and laced with countless humorous anecdotes. When he viewed something through the microscope that was distinctive but not familiar, he would say: "This is a classic example of whatever it is!" An inspiring, tireless and kind teacher of residents and fellows, he could not stand cant and pomposity, stating: "One must take the job but not one's self seriously."

Dr. Hertig, his beloved wife, Linda, on whom he was greatly dependent, and their two children, Helen and Andrew, led a happy, close-knit home life. Many students, residents and faculty will remember gracious hospitality at their homes in Winchester and Mussel Point, Gloucester, Mass., and numerous kind gestures of helpful interest in their personal lives. Tragedy struck in 1983 when Helen and her younger daughter were killed in a plane crash; in 1988, Linda died. Dr. Hertig bore these blows with fortitude, sustained by his strong religious faith, and supported by Andrew and his family, and Helen's children. His later years were clouded by severe arthritis, and his second marriage to Frances Thomas lasted unfortunately but a few happy months.

Dr. Hertig's contributions to science and medicine are imperishable; his impression on our minds and hearts as a teacher, leader, colleague and friend is indelible.

Respectfully submitted by:

Morris J. Karnovsky, Chair

Kurt Benirschke

George Th. Diamandopoulos

Shirley Driscoll

Robert Ehrmann

Hazel Gore

Lorna Johnson

Norval King

Hermann Lisco

Guido Majno

Robert Scully

February 1, 1996

John Gordon Torrey was a wise, sober man of great determination and high principle -- truthful, straightforward, honest and fair. He brought these attributes to all of his professional judgments and personal relationships.

John Gordon Torrey was the son of the Philadelphia banker W. Edward Torrey and his wife Elsie (Gordon) Torrey. He was born in Philadelphia on February 22, 1921, the third of four children and the second son in the family. He received his B.A. at Williams College in 1942. Then he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as an officer in the Medical Administrative Corps with the 317th Station Hospital in the U.S. and in the European Theatre. Professor Kenneth Thimann recalls that John Torrey came to Harvard while still in uniform and was the first graduate student to come into the Biology Department after World War II. Professor Thimann supervised John Torrey's graduate research; Professor Ralph Wetmore provided additional guidance. After receiving an M.A. from Harvard in 1947, he was awarded a traveling fellowship that enabled him to spend the year 1948-49 at Cambridge University's Botany School. In 1949, in England, he was married to Noreen Lea-Wilson with whom he had become acquainted during his military service in England a few years earlier. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree by Harvard in 1950 but before that time, in 1949, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He remained on the Berkeley faculty until July of 1960 when he took up a Professorship in the Biology Department at Harvard. He retired in 1991 and died on the 7th of January 1993. His remarkable determination and strength of character was evident through his last days. Published obituaries noted that he was survived by his wife, Noreen, and five daughters -- Jennifer, Joanna, Susan, Sarah and Carolyn. Those obituaries failed to note that he was also survived by his teacher, K. V. Thimann, as well as scores of admiring colleagues and former students.

John Torrey identified the subject of his more than fifty year-long research career -- the growth and development of roots -- while an undergraduate at Williams. In his undergraduate research at Williams and then in his Ph. D. research at Harvard, he investigated the role of the plant growth hormone indoleacetic acid on the initiation of branch roots from single cells in the pericyle, a one cell-thick tissue deep in the root. His Harvard Ph. D. thesis reflected Professor Thimann's emphasis on plant physiology and Professor Ralph Wetmore's interest and experience in studying the formation and differentiation of plant tissues and organs. During the 1950's at Berkeley, John Torrey continued to study root morphogenesis; his research papers and reviews are the foundations of much of contemporary experimental root biology.

Starting in the mid-1950s he became interested in nitrogen fixation in plants. The roots of legumes produce nodules inhabited by a form of the Rhizobium bacterium. In the nodules, energy supplied by the plant, in the form of products of photosynthesis, is used to convert atmospheric nitrogen into building blocks for plant proteins. By the mid-1970s nodule formation had become the major subject of John Torrey's research. Some shrubs and trees have nodules that fix atmospheric nitrogen but do not contain Rhizobium bacteria. Such nodules were called mycorrhiza because everyone was certain that a fungus was the plant's partner in nodule formation and nitrogen fixation but the microorganism had never been isolated. All of this changed in 1978 when John Torrey and his coworkers D. Callaham and P. Del Tredici reported that they had isolated from "mycorrhizae" and cultivated in vitro not a fungus but the actinomycete Frankia and showed that it is the nitrogen fixing partner of the nonlegume Comptonia. A new field of research was born because of this information and the availability of Frankia in culture. In the period from 1978 to 1991, John Torrey's laboratory alone published more than 70 papers on aspects of the development and structure of Frankia nodules in actinorrhizal plants.

John Torrey's contributions to science were recognized by many invitations to speak and by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, to the Presidency of the Society for Developmental Biology in 1963, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. His wisdom and good judgment were recognized by his appointment to numerous advisory posts and editorial positions.

Five years after he joined the Harvard faculty, John Torrey was appointed the fifth Director of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research. He retained this position for 10 years. At his initiative the Foundation funded the construction of a much needed expansion of the University's herbaria and the establishment of the Controlled Environment Facility at the Harvard Forest. The latter is now named the John G. Torrey Laboratory.

Because of his research interests, his personal and professional associations with Professor Martin Zimmermann (then Director of the Harvard Forest) and Professor P. B. Tomlinson (the other senior faculty member at the Forest), and his concern for the future of the Harvard Forest, John Torrey moved his laboratory to the Forest in 1970. Upon Professor Zimmermann's untimely death in 1984, John Torrey was appointed Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Director of the Harvard Forest. He remained in that position until 1990. He had a great impact on the Harvard Forest: from initiating Freshman Seminars there to organizing a consortium of scientists from several universities to conduct research at the Forest. The latter led to the award of a large grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a Long Term Ecological Research Site. John Torrey, the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research and the National Science Foundation all contributed to a major strengthening of the Forest. These effects on the Forest must stand among John Torrey's most important enduring entrepreneurial contributions to the University and the scientific community.

At a memorial service for John Torrey about a year ago, his daughter Joanna read a touching piece entitled "My Father, The Collector." It told of his enthusiasm for collecting botanical specimens, old fashioned long-handled drugstore soda spoons and the locations of blue-plate lunch restaurants in the neighborhoods or towns in which he liked to collect. But his particular collecting ardor was saved for British, Scottish and New England etchings from the period of about 1880 to 1930. In his retirement, he planned to study, and to write about, "the interaction, interplay and influence of the group of British etchers on the Americans and vice versa."

John Torrey was outspoken and, in his controlled way, passionate about what he thought was right and what he thought was unjust and thus wrong. This is reflected in his comments on certain aspects of the management of endowment funds by the University in a personal chapter he wrote in 1994 in his short volume on the "History of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research of Harvard University, 1937-1987." He was concerned with the ethics of science and, more, always concerned with the ethics of people in dealing with one another. He is a man to miss.

David R. Foster

Reed C. Rollins

Otto T. Solbrig

Kenneth V. Thimann

Philip Barry Tomlinson

Lawrence Bogorad, Chairman

 

---

Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Arthur T. Hertig

Arthur Tremain Hertig, HMS '30, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy, Emeritus, died suddenly on July 20th, 1990, in his 86th year after a distinguished, varied, and colorful scientific career, much of it spent in association with Harvard Medical School.

Born in Minneapolis, he was initially attracted toward a career in entomology, and indeed began his scientific career as a high school senior working part-time in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. He later wrote that the "vista of science opened for me. At 40 cents an hour the pay and intellectual climate were better than working in a bakery-ice cream establishment," -- where he had worked previously -- "good though that was." His elder brother, Marshall, was an entomologist and no doubt this played a role in Dr. Hertig's life-long interest in entomology; in later years, he termed himself a "pseudo-entomologist." Entomology was pursued as a means of financial support in college and later in medical school. A greatly admired family physician led Hertig to study medicine at the University of Minnesota. Following his freshman year, the lure of entomology drew him to take a two year leave of absence from medical school to work with Marshall in China at the Peking Union Medical College. During the course of his work as Marshall's assistant in field studies on the insect transmission of Kala Azar, the brothers devised an ingenious method for artificially feeding sand flies (the insect vector now known to transmit Kala Azar), and to infect them with Leishmania donovani, the causative agent. The technique was reported in Science in 1927 and was the first of Dr. Hertig's many and diverse scientific papers; he was always proud of this particular publication. Fortuitously, Dr. David L. Edsall, then Dean of the Harvard Medical School, was in China at that time, and young Hertig had the opportunity of demonstrating (with the last captive sand fly of the season!) his technique. Dean Edsall was so impressed with the procedure and its inventor that he invited Hertig to transfer to Harvard Medical School to continue his medical studies, which he did in 1928 (luckily for HMS) after completing his second year in Minnesota.

At that time S. Burt Wolbach, the IVth Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy at HMS and Pathologist-in-Chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was carrying out his authoritative investigations on diseases caused by rickettsiae and their transmission by insects. Naturally, with his interest in entomology, Hertig was drawn to work with Dr. Wolbach and was hired in 1929 to spend a summer of field research with him on Naushon Island and Martha's Vineyard, working on a project to control wood ticks. Hertig's interest in pathology was piqued by his contact with Dr. Wolbach, so, after he graduated M.D. in 1930, he started training as a house officer in pathology at the Peter Bent Brigham. With barely eight months of formal training under his belt, Dr. Hertig was invited by Dr. Wolbach to establish the first pathology laboratory at the former Boston Lying-in Hospital. The invitation was extended while Drs. Wolbach, Farber and Hertig were walking down Longwood Avenue on Valentine's Day, 1931. Fortunately, Dr. Hertig paid no heed to some of his peers who advised him that there was no future in obstetric pathology as reproduction and childbirth were normal, physiologic phenomena -- furthermore, as he pointed out, this was a paying job in the Depression.

In 1933 a one year National Research Council Fellowship in Embryology enabled Dr. Hertig to study at the Carnegie Institute in Baltimore, under the eminent embryologist George L. Streeter. There was a two-fold outcome of his sojourn in Baltimore: a lifelong interest in early human development and in obstetric and gynecologic pathology, and a masterly and beautifully illustrated opus published in 1935, on the cellular events involved in angiogenesis in early human and Macaque monkey placentas. It was also at the Carnegie that Dr. Hertig, "as an interested onlooker", learned a technique developed there of isolating early fertilized ova from primates. This experience was to have enormous consequences in his research some years later. On his return to Boston, Dr. Hertig completed his training in pathology under Dr. Sidney Farber at the Children's Hospital, and was appointed assistant pathologist at the Boston Lying-in Hospital. In addition, on the advice and urging of Frederick C. Irving, Richardson Professor of Obstetrics, he simultaneously undertook full-scale training in obstetrics and gynecology -- no mean feat -- and was later certified a diplomate by both the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Pathology in 1944 and 1946 respectively. Although initially Dr. Hertig was an Instructor in Pathology for six years, by 1948 he had risen to the rank of Professor and pathologist at the two Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals for obstetrics and gynecology, the Boston Lying-in Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women. In 1952, he was appointed Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Chair of the Department of Pathology, positions which he held for 18 and 16 years respectively. In order to return to full-time research, he resigned somewhat ahead of time from the Chair, joining the staff of the New England Primate Center in Southborough, Massachusetts, as Chief of the Division of Pathobiology, (whilst, he said, "I still have all my buttons."). Dr. Hertig became Emeritus in 1974, but continued to work at the Primate Center virtually until his death.

Dr. Hertig often talked about the role of chance in his life, but clearly, in accord with Pasteur's aphorism, chance favored his prepared mind. A further instance of this in Dr. Hertig's career was when he became pathologist at the Free Hospital for Women in 1938, and began his long-standing collaboration, describing the early human ovum, with Dr. John Rock, HMS '18; the egg-harvesting techniques he had observed at the Carnegie for collecting ova now bore fruit. Drs. Hertig and Rock collected 34 normal and abnormal human ova from uteri and fallopian tubes removed for gynecologic disease. These ova were studied in fastidious detail in a series of ageless papers published over a span of fifteen years. These studies included the first description of the earliest stage of human development, the two-cell ovum, which appears in all major textbooks of anatomy, embryology and gynecology. Only 34 of 210 egg-hunts were successful! Those who were present when an "egg-hunt" was in progress marveled at the dedication, care, dexterity and patience displayed in finding the ovum, photographing it at the gross level, then serially sectioning it for microscopic analysis and reconstruction. These systematic studies, accomplished without formal grant support, were basic to the subsequent development of current management of infertile patients and our ability to transplant fertilized ova.

Being a sports fan, Dr. Hertig would not infrequently claim that the successful conclusion of the hunt occurred, for instance, at the very moment Ted Williams hit a home run, or at the moment Dominic DiMaggio tied the 1946 World Series for the Boston Red Sox with a double, and thus the appropriate sobriquet was attached to that particular ovum -- even if it turned out to be a "bad egg," a lost game, or a lost series.

Dr. Hertig's further scientific publications encompass the breadth of obstetric and gynecologic pathology. The early studies on angiogenesis in the early human chorion and in the primary placenta of the Macaque monkey formed the basis for analyses of abortuses, hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma. These reports are basic to our understanding of trophoblastic disease and its treatment. Dr. Hertig's monograph, Human Trophoblast, published in 1968, is the synthesis of his lifelong fascination with this tissue.

Alongside the trophoblastic studies, were fundamental and classic studies on dating the human endometrium in the menstrual cycle, and correlation of the endometrial patterns with corpus luteum development and function. Atypical endometrial patterns were correlated with the development of adenocarcinoma. Together with Paul Younge he worked on the interpretation of early abnormal changes in the cervix preceding the development of squamous cell carcinoma. Overall Dr. Hertig made pioneering and significant contributions in placental pathology, precancerous lesions of the endometrium and cervix, and trophoblastic disease. He wrote all three of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology fascicles dealing with female genital tract tumors. Nevertheless, he took the most pleasure in his studies of the early ovum. Through his research contributions, at a time when obstetric and gynecologic pathology in the USA was dominated by European-trained physicians, Dr. Hertig rose to be the first truly great native-trained pathologist in that subspecialty. Moreover, he was well-known as a caring and compassionate physician. His concern for patients, his wisdom and his vast expertise, made him highly regarded as a consultant on whom clinical colleagues markedly depended for guidance.

After retiring from the Chair of the Department of Pathology in 1968, Dr. Hertig moved his laboratory to the New England Primate Research Center where, with typical zest and curiosity, he focused his attention on nonhuman primate reproductive pathophysiology, and made some remarkable contributions, including investigations of the placental lesions associated with spontaneous abortion, vaginal adenosis, and the ultrastructure of ova.

Dr. Hertig's teaching is remembered by many HMS graduates. He loved introducing medical students to obstetric and gynecologic pathology, but did not neglect ensuring that other areas of pathology were properly covered. Many of the gross specimens and slides were personally inspected as to suitability for the students. His lectures were clear and concise, scholarly and logical, and laced with a delicious sense of humor, personal anecdotes and mordant wit. Dr. Hertig would tell the students that he was "just a hospital pathologist", and that he would lecture on the female reproductive tract, which was important because it was possessed by 50% of the population, and also because "it was the only thing he knew about." What was unique was that Dr. Hertig would sit in on lectures in the course, especially those given by the junior faculty. He would take pages of notes in longhand, just as a student would, and at the end of the lecture hand the notes to the lecturer, saying, "Well, this is what I understood. If I got it wrong, you'd better do something about it." He felt that successful teaching was couched in simple language.

His regard and concern for students was reflected in the fact that, for some years, he endeavored to have every student in the class, in a small group, to tea in his office. This was an enormous consumption of his time, but was a vivid reflection of his concern for students and for teaching. In fact, on two occasions, Dr. Hertig received the highest award at HMS, given by the students themselves, for excellence in teaching, and was made an honorary member of one the graduating classes -- a signal recognition of his interest in students.

After the completion of teaching on Friday mornings, the faculty would meet in the department for lunch. Seated at the head of a long table, Dr. Hertig would regale the company with aphorisms, stories, jokes and pearls of wisdom. In reference to his own career he was fond of saying "I have gone a long way on a few dozen eggs and a bunch of grapes" -- the latter referring to his work on hydatidiform moles. Other favorite phrases were "the morphology, the more fun" (bad puns did not faze him). He would aver that there was little correlation between quality of work and fanciness of laboratory surroundings and equipment. Reflecting on his own research, accomplished without high technology, he stated: "We need high-powered thinking with low-powered tools." Certainly his own major tool was the dissecting microscope. He referred to a luncheon party that he hosted for John Rock, his long-time friend and collaborator, as the "Hertig-Rock festival." His faculty and residents were always eager to hear his words and laugh with him at pomposity. He would recount progress on the refurbishing of his wooden sailboat, including bending the ribs, an art which he had learnt from a carpenter at the medical school. Sailing was his main hobby, relished at his summer home in Gloucester, Mass. A whale washed up on his beach one year, and the saga of having it removed -- all officialdom disclaiming responsibility -- entertained his listeners for weeks; some accused him of deliberately arranging the beaching as a conversation piece! His adventures in China must have led to a liking for Chinese food: he would expound on and demonstrate the use of chopsticks.

He loved words, their twists of meaning and their sound, and would insist on correct and euphonious usage, which entailed frequent consulting of dictionaries and thesauri. On accepting the highest award of the American Association of Pathologists, the Gold-Headed Cane, he said he was both "astounded" and "surprised" -- astounded by the honor, and surprised when he heard of it. He then discoursed learnedly on the differences in precise meaning of these words. He quoted the anecdote concerning Dr. Samuel Johnson, discovered by his wife kissing the maid. Johnson's wife exclaimed: "Why, Dr. Johnson, I am surprised." Said Johnson, "On the contrary, madame, you are astounded; I am surprised!" Dr. Hertig wittily pointed out that actually "surprise" and "astound" can be in some senses synonymous, which leaves us "a bit confused, as undoubtedly, both the wife and Dr. Johnson were, not to mention the maid herself." Paradoxically, he disliked writing papers, agonized over them: nevertheless, he has some 200 papers to his name. He spent hours going over manuscripts and grant applications of junior faculty. The writings of E.B. White, particularly Stuart Little, were much quoted.

Happenings in his science as well as in his personal life were described in vivid terms. In his biographic sketch, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1973, he synopsized his career as "forty years in the female pelvis -- a case of prolonged dystocia." Many will remember his exhortation when life looked gloomy -- "Be of good cheer!"

Dr. Hertig took an active leadership role in many professional societies. These included inter alia, President of the American Board of Pathology, the New England Society of Pathology, the New England Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, Governor of the College of American Pathologists, and a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Consultants to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

He received many awards and honors: among these were election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, corecipient with John Rock of the American Gynecological Society Award, the Ward Burdick Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology, Distinguished Service Awards from the College of American Pathologists, the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (also elected an Honorary Fellow), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (which also inducted him into their Hall of Fame), the American Gynecological Society, and from the International Academy of Pathology, the Distinguished Pathologist Award. The American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists gave him its most prestigious award, the "Gold-Headed Cane"; and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London, elected him an honorary ad eundem fellow (only one American a year can be so honored).

It was typical of the man that in a published speech "On Accepting An Award," he declared, in tribute to his teachers, "Pigmaei gigantum humerus impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident" -- pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.

Many are those who have stood on Dr. Hertig's shoulders, and have become well-known and successful in their own right. A ruddy-faced, rather bluff man, Dr. Hertig revealed, on acquaintance, an outgoing, kind and sensitive persona. Generous with his time and wisdom, his teaching of fellows and residents was vivid, full of wit and whimsy, and laced with countless humorous anecdotes. When he viewed something through the microscope that was distinctive but not familiar, he would say: "This is a classic example of whatever it is!" An inspiring, tireless and kind teacher of residents and fellows, he could not stand cant and pomposity, stating: "One must take the job but not one's self seriously."

Dr. Hertig, his beloved wife, Linda, on whom he was greatly dependent, and their two children, Helen and Andrew, led a happy, close-knit home life. Many students, residents and faculty will remember gracious hospitality at their homes in Winchester and Mussel Point, Gloucester, Mass., and numerous kind gestures of helpful interest in their personal lives. Tragedy struck in 1983 when Helen and her younger daughter were killed in a plane crash; in 1988, Linda died. Dr. Hertig bore these blows with fortitude, sustained by his strong religious faith, and supported by Andrew and his family, and Helen's children. His later years were clouded by severe arthritis, and his second marriage to Frances Thomas lasted unfortunately but a few happy months.

Dr. Hertig's contributions to science and medicine are imperishable; his impression on our minds and hearts as a teacher, leader, colleague and friend is indelible.

Respectfully submitted by:

Morris J. Karnovsky, Chair

Kurt Benirschke

George Th. Diamandopoulos

Shirley Driscoll

Robert Ehrmann

Hazel Gore

Lorna Johnson

Norval King

Hermann Lisco

Guido Majno

Robert Scully

February 1, 1996

John Gordon Torrey was a wise, sober man of great determination and high principle -- truthful, straightforward, honest and fair. He brought these attributes to all of his professional judgments and personal relationships.

John Gordon Torrey was the son of the Philadelphia banker W. Edward Torrey and his wife Elsie (Gordon) Torrey. He was born in Philadelphia on February 22, 1921, the third of four children and the second son in the family. He received his B.A. at Williams College in 1942. Then he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as an officer in the Medical Administrative Corps with the 317th Station Hospital in the U.S. and in the European Theatre. Professor Kenneth Thimann recalls that John Torrey came to Harvard while still in uniform and was the first graduate student to come into the Biology Department after World War II. Professor Thimann supervised John Torrey's graduate research; Professor Ralph Wetmore provided additional guidance. After receiving an M.A. from Harvard in 1947, he was awarded a traveling fellowship that enabled him to spend the year 1948-49 at Cambridge University's Botany School. In 1949, in England, he was married to Noreen Lea-Wilson with whom he had become acquainted during his military service in England a few years earlier. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree by Harvard in 1950 but before that time, in 1949, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He remained on the Berkeley faculty until July of 1960 when he took up a Professorship in the Biology Department at Harvard. He retired in 1991 and died on the 7th of January 1993. His remarkable determination and strength of character was evident through his last days. Published obituaries noted that he was survived by his wife, Noreen, and five daughters -- Jennifer, Joanna, Susan, Sarah and Carolyn. Those obituaries failed to note that he was also survived by his teacher, K. V. Thimann, as well as scores of admiring colleagues and former students.

John Torrey identified the subject of his more than fifty year-long research career -- the growth and development of roots -- while an undergraduate at Williams. In his undergraduate research at Williams and then in his Ph. D. research at Harvard, he investigated the role of the plant growth hormone indoleacetic acid on the initiation of branch roots from single cells in the pericyle, a one cell-thick tissue deep in the root. His Harvard Ph. D. thesis reflected Professor Thimann's emphasis on plant physiology and Professor Ralph Wetmore's interest and experience in studying the formation and differentiation of plant tissues and organs. During the 1950's at Berkeley, John Torrey continued to study root morphogenesis; his research papers and reviews are the foundations of much of contemporary experimental root biology.

Starting in the mid-1950s he became interested in nitrogen fixation in plants. The roots of legumes produce nodules inhabited by a form of the Rhizobium bacterium. In the nodules, energy supplied by the plant, in the form of products of photosynthesis, is used to convert atmospheric nitrogen into building blocks for plant proteins. By the mid-1970s nodule formation had become the major subject of John Torrey's research. Some shrubs and trees have nodules that fix atmospheric nitrogen but do not contain Rhizobium bacteria. Such nodules were called mycorrhiza because everyone was certain that a fungus was the plant's partner in nodule formation and nitrogen fixation but the microorganism had never been isolated. All of this changed in 1978 when John Torrey and his coworkers D. Callaham and P. Del Tredici reported that they had isolated from "mycorrhizae" and cultivated in vitro not a fungus but the actinomycete Frankia and showed that it is the nitrogen fixing partner of the nonlegume Comptonia. A new field of research was born because of this information and the availability of Frankia in culture. In the period from 1978 to 1991, John Torrey's laboratory alone published more than 70 papers on aspects of the development and structure of Frankia nodules in actinorrhizal plants.

John Torrey's contributions to science were recognized by many invitations to speak and by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, to the Presidency of the Society for Developmental Biology in 1963, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. His wisdom and good judgment were recognized by his appointment to numerous advisory posts and editorial positions.

Five years after he joined the Harvard faculty, John Torrey was appointed the fifth Director of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research. He retained this position for 10 years. At his initiative the Foundation funded the construction of a much needed expansion of the University's herbaria and the establishment of the Controlled Environment Facility at the Harvard Forest. The latter is now named the John G. Torrey Laboratory.

Because of his research interests, his personal and professional associations with Professor Martin Zimmermann (then Director of the Harvard Forest) and Professor P. B. Tomlinson (the other senior faculty member at the Forest), and his concern for the future of the Harvard Forest, John Torrey moved his laboratory to the Forest in 1970. Upon Professor Zimmermann's untimely death in 1984, John Torrey was appointed Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Director of the Harvard Forest. He remained in that position until 1990. He had a great impact on the Harvard Forest: from initiating Freshman Seminars there to organizing a consortium of scientists from several universities to conduct research at the Forest. The latter led to the award of a large grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a Long Term Ecological Research Site. John Torrey, the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research and the National Science Foundation all contributed to a major strengthening of the Forest. These effects on the Forest must stand among John Torrey's most important enduring entrepreneurial contributions to the University and the scientific community.

At a memorial service for John Torrey about a year ago, his daughter Joanna read a touching piece entitled "My Father, The Collector." It told of his enthusiasm for collecting botanical specimens, old fashioned long-handled drugstore soda spoons and the locations of blue-plate lunch restaurants in the neighborhoods or towns in which he liked to collect. But his particular collecting ardor was saved for British, Scottish and New England etchings from the period of about 1880 to 1930. In his retirement, he planned to study, and to write about, "the interaction, interplay and influence of the group of British etchers on the Americans and vice versa."

John Torrey was outspoken and, in his controlled way, passionate about what he thought was right and what he thought was unjust and thus wrong. This is reflected in his comments on certain aspects of the management of endowment funds by the University in a personal chapter he wrote in 1994 in his short volume on the "History of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research of Harvard University, 1937-1987." He was concerned with the ethics of science and, more, always concerned with the ethics of people in dealing with one another. He is a man to miss.

David R. Foster

Reed C. Rollins

Otto T. Solbrig

Kenneth V. Thimann

Philip Barry Tomlinson

Lawrence Bogorad, Chairman

 

---

Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Arthur T. Hertig

Arthur Tremain Hertig, HMS '30, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy, Emeritus, died suddenly on July 20th, 1990, in his 86th year after a distinguished, varied, and colorful scientific career, much of it spent in association with Harvard Medical School.

Born in Minneapolis, he was initially attracted toward a career in entomology, and indeed began his scientific career as a high school senior working part-time in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. He later wrote that the "vista of science opened for me. At 40 cents an hour the pay and intellectual climate were better than working in a bakery-ice cream establishment," -- where he had worked previously -- "good though that was." His elder brother, Marshall, was an entomologist and no doubt this played a role in Dr. Hertig's life-long interest in entomology; in later years, he termed himself a "pseudo-entomologist." Entomology was pursued as a means of financial support in college and later in medical school. A greatly admired family physician led Hertig to study medicine at the University of Minnesota. Following his freshman year, the lure of entomology drew him to take a two year leave of absence from medical school to work with Marshall in China at the Peking Union Medical College. During the course of his work as Marshall's assistant in field studies on the insect transmission of Kala Azar, the brothers devised an ingenious method for artificially feeding sand flies (the insect vector now known to transmit Kala Azar), and to infect them with Leishmania donovani, the causative agent. The technique was reported in Science in 1927 and was the first of Dr. Hertig's many and diverse scientific papers; he was always proud of this particular publication. Fortuitously, Dr. David L. Edsall, then Dean of the Harvard Medical School, was in China at that time, and young Hertig had the opportunity of demonstrating (with the last captive sand fly of the season!) his technique. Dean Edsall was so impressed with the procedure and its inventor that he invited Hertig to transfer to Harvard Medical School to continue his medical studies, which he did in 1928 (luckily for HMS) after completing his second year in Minnesota.

At that time S. Burt Wolbach, the IVth Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy at HMS and Pathologist-in-Chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was carrying out his authoritative investigations on diseases caused by rickettsiae and their transmission by insects. Naturally, with his interest in entomology, Hertig was drawn to work with Dr. Wolbach and was hired in 1929 to spend a summer of field research with him on Naushon Island and Martha's Vineyard, working on a project to control wood ticks. Hertig's interest in pathology was piqued by his contact with Dr. Wolbach, so, after he graduated M.D. in 1930, he started training as a house officer in pathology at the Peter Bent Brigham. With barely eight months of formal training under his belt, Dr. Hertig was invited by Dr. Wolbach to establish the first pathology laboratory at the former Boston Lying-in Hospital. The invitation was extended while Drs. Wolbach, Farber and Hertig were walking down Longwood Avenue on Valentine's Day, 1931. Fortunately, Dr. Hertig paid no heed to some of his peers who advised him that there was no future in obstetric pathology as reproduction and childbirth were normal, physiologic phenomena -- furthermore, as he pointed out, this was a paying job in the Depression.

In 1933 a one year National Research Council Fellowship in Embryology enabled Dr. Hertig to study at the Carnegie Institute in Baltimore, under the eminent embryologist George L. Streeter. There was a two-fold outcome of his sojourn in Baltimore: a lifelong interest in early human development and in obstetric and gynecologic pathology, and a masterly and beautifully illustrated opus published in 1935, on the cellular events involved in angiogenesis in early human and Macaque monkey placentas. It was also at the Carnegie that Dr. Hertig, "as an interested onlooker", learned a technique developed there of isolating early fertilized ova from primates. This experience was to have enormous consequences in his research some years later. On his return to Boston, Dr. Hertig completed his training in pathology under Dr. Sidney Farber at the Children's Hospital, and was appointed assistant pathologist at the Boston Lying-in Hospital. In addition, on the advice and urging of Frederick C. Irving, Richardson Professor of Obstetrics, he simultaneously undertook full-scale training in obstetrics and gynecology -- no mean feat -- and was later certified a diplomate by both the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Pathology in 1944 and 1946 respectively. Although initially Dr. Hertig was an Instructor in Pathology for six years, by 1948 he had risen to the rank of Professor and pathologist at the two Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals for obstetrics and gynecology, the Boston Lying-in Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women. In 1952, he was appointed Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Chair of the Department of Pathology, positions which he held for 18 and 16 years respectively. In order to return to full-time research, he resigned somewhat ahead of time from the Chair, joining the staff of the New England Primate Center in Southborough, Massachusetts, as Chief of the Division of Pathobiology, (whilst, he said, "I still have all my buttons."). Dr. Hertig became Emeritus in 1974, but continued to work at the Primate Center virtually until his death.

Dr. Hertig often talked about the role of chance in his life, but clearly, in accord with Pasteur's aphorism, chance favored his prepared mind. A further instance of this in Dr. Hertig's career was when he became pathologist at the Free Hospital for Women in 1938, and began his long-standing collaboration, describing the early human ovum, with Dr. John Rock, HMS '18; the egg-harvesting techniques he had observed at the Carnegie for collecting ova now bore fruit. Drs. Hertig and Rock collected 34 normal and abnormal human ova from uteri and fallopian tubes removed for gynecologic disease. These ova were studied in fastidious detail in a series of ageless papers published over a span of fifteen years. These studies included the first description of the earliest stage of human development, the two-cell ovum, which appears in all major textbooks of anatomy, embryology and gynecology. Only 34 of 210 egg-hunts were successful! Those who were present when an "egg-hunt" was in progress marveled at the dedication, care, dexterity and patience displayed in finding the ovum, photographing it at the gross level, then serially sectioning it for microscopic analysis and reconstruction. These systematic studies, accomplished without formal grant support, were basic to the subsequent development of current management of infertile patients and our ability to transplant fertilized ova.

Being a sports fan, Dr. Hertig would not infrequently claim that the successful conclusion of the hunt occurred, for instance, at the very moment Ted Williams hit a home run, or at the moment Dominic DiMaggio tied the 1946 World Series for the Boston Red Sox with a double, and thus the appropriate sobriquet was attached to that particular ovum -- even if it turned out to be a "bad egg," a lost game, or a lost series.

Dr. Hertig's further scientific publications encompass the breadth of obstetric and gynecologic pathology. The early studies on angiogenesis in the early human chorion and in the primary placenta of the Macaque monkey formed the basis for analyses of abortuses, hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma. These reports are basic to our understanding of trophoblastic disease and its treatment. Dr. Hertig's monograph, Human Trophoblast, published in 1968, is the synthesis of his lifelong fascination with this tissue.

Alongside the trophoblastic studies, were fundamental and classic studies on dating the human endometrium in the menstrual cycle, and correlation of the endometrial patterns with corpus luteum development and function. Atypical endometrial patterns were correlated with the development of adenocarcinoma. Together with Paul Younge he worked on the interpretation of early abnormal changes in the cervix preceding the development of squamous cell carcinoma. Overall Dr. Hertig made pioneering and significant contributions in placental pathology, precancerous lesions of the endometrium and cervix, and trophoblastic disease. He wrote all three of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology fascicles dealing with female genital tract tumors. Nevertheless, he took the most pleasure in his studies of the early ovum. Through his research contributions, at a time when obstetric and gynecologic pathology in the USA was dominated by European-trained physicians, Dr. Hertig rose to be the first truly great native-trained pathologist in that subspecialty. Moreover, he was well-known as a caring and compassionate physician. His concern for patients, his wisdom and his vast expertise, made him highly regarded as a consultant on whom clinical colleagues markedly depended for guidance.

After retiring from the Chair of the Department of Pathology in 1968, Dr. Hertig moved his laboratory to the New England Primate Research Center where, with typical zest and curiosity, he focused his attention on nonhuman primate reproductive pathophysiology, and made some remarkable contributions, including investigations of the placental lesions associated with spontaneous abortion, vaginal adenosis, and the ultrastructure of ova.

Dr. Hertig's teaching is remembered by many HMS graduates. He loved introducing medical students to obstetric and gynecologic pathology, but did not neglect ensuring that other areas of pathology were properly covered. Many of the gross specimens and slides were personally inspected as to suitability for the students. His lectures were clear and concise, scholarly and logical, and laced with a delicious sense of humor, personal anecdotes and mordant wit. Dr. Hertig would tell the students that he was "just a hospital pathologist", and that he would lecture on the female reproductive tract, which was important because it was possessed by 50% of the population, and also because "it was the only thing he knew about." What was unique was that Dr. Hertig would sit in on lectures in the course, especially those given by the junior faculty. He would take pages of notes in longhand, just as a student would, and at the end of the lecture hand the notes to the lecturer, saying, "Well, this is what I understood. If I got it wrong, you'd better do something about it." He felt that successful teaching was couched in simple language.

His regard and concern for students was reflected in the fact that, for some years, he endeavored to have every student in the class, in a small group, to tea in his office. This was an enormous consumption of his time, but was a vivid reflection of his concern for students and for teaching. In fact, on two occasions, Dr. Hertig received the highest award at HMS, given by the students themselves, for excellence in teaching, and was made an honorary member of one the graduating classes -- a signal recognition of his interest in students.

After the completion of teaching on Friday mornings, the faculty would meet in the department for lunch. Seated at the head of a long table, Dr. Hertig would regale the company with aphorisms, stories, jokes and pearls of wisdom. In reference to his own career he was fond of saying "I have gone a long way on a few dozen eggs and a bunch of grapes" -- the latter referring to his work on hydatidiform moles. Other favorite phrases were "the morphology, the more fun" (bad puns did not faze him). He would aver that there was little correlation between quality of work and fanciness of laboratory surroundings and equipment. Reflecting on his own research, accomplished without high technology, he stated: "We need high-powered thinking with low-powered tools." Certainly his own major tool was the dissecting microscope. He referred to a luncheon party that he hosted for John Rock, his long-time friend and collaborator, as the "Hertig-Rock festival." His faculty and residents were always eager to hear his words and laugh with him at pomposity. He would recount progress on the refurbishing of his wooden sailboat, including bending the ribs, an art which he had learnt from a carpenter at the medical school. Sailing was his main hobby, relished at his summer home in Gloucester, Mass. A whale washed up on his beach one year, and the saga of having it removed -- all officialdom disclaiming responsibility -- entertained his listeners for weeks; some accused him of deliberately arranging the beaching as a conversation piece! His adventures in China must have led to a liking for Chinese food: he would expound on and demonstrate the use of chopsticks.

He loved words, their twists of meaning and their sound, and would insist on correct and euphonious usage, which entailed frequent consulting of dictionaries and thesauri. On accepting the highest award of the American Association of Pathologists, the Gold-Headed Cane, he said he was both "astounded" and "surprised" -- astounded by the honor, and surprised when he heard of it. He then discoursed learnedly on the differences in precise meaning of these words. He quoted the anecdote concerning Dr. Samuel Johnson, discovered by his wife kissing the maid. Johnson's wife exclaimed: "Why, Dr. Johnson, I am surprised." Said Johnson, "On the contrary, madame, you are astounded; I am surprised!" Dr. Hertig wittily pointed out that actually "surprise" and "astound" can be in some senses synonymous, which leaves us "a bit confused, as undoubtedly, both the wife and Dr. Johnson were, not to mention the maid herself." Paradoxically, he disliked writing papers, agonized over them: nevertheless, he has some 200 papers to his name. He spent hours going over manuscripts and grant applications of junior faculty. The writings of E.B. White, particularly Stuart Little, were much quoted.

Happenings in his science as well as in his personal life were described in vivid terms. In his biographic sketch, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1973, he synopsized his career as "forty years in the female pelvis -- a case of prolonged dystocia." Many will remember his exhortation when life looked gloomy -- "Be of good cheer!"

Dr. Hertig took an active leadership role in many professional societies. These included inter alia, President of the American Board of Pathology, the New England Society of Pathology, the New England Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, Governor of the College of American Pathologists, and a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Consultants to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

He received many awards and honors: among these were election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, corecipient with John Rock of the American Gynecological Society Award, the Ward Burdick Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology, Distinguished Service Awards from the College of American Pathologists, the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (also elected an Honorary Fellow), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (which also inducted him into their Hall of Fame), the American Gynecological Society, and from the International Academy of Pathology, the Distinguished Pathologist Award. The American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists gave him its most prestigious award, the "Gold-Headed Cane"; and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London, elected him an honorary ad eundem fellow (only one American a year can be so honored).

It was typical of the man that in a published speech "On Accepting An Award," he declared, in tribute to his teachers, "Pigmaei gigantum humerus impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident" -- pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.

Many are those who have stood on Dr. Hertig's shoulders, and have become well-known and successful in their own right. A ruddy-faced, rather bluff man, Dr. Hertig revealed, on acquaintance, an outgoing, kind and sensitive persona. Generous with his time and wisdom, his teaching of fellows and residents was vivid, full of wit and whimsy, and laced with countless humorous anecdotes. When he viewed something through the microscope that was distinctive but not familiar, he would say: "This is a classic example of whatever it is!" An inspiring, tireless and kind teacher of residents and fellows, he could not stand cant and pomposity, stating: "One must take the job but not one's self seriously."

Dr. Hertig, his beloved wife, Linda, on whom he was greatly dependent, and their two children, Helen and Andrew, led a happy, close-knit home life. Many students, residents and faculty will remember gracious hospitality at their homes in Winchester and Mussel Point, Gloucester, Mass., and numerous kind gestures of helpful interest in their personal lives. Tragedy struck in 1983 when Helen and her younger daughter were killed in a plane crash; in 1988, Linda died. Dr. Hertig bore these blows with fortitude, sustained by his strong religious faith, and supported by Andrew and his family, and Helen's children. His later years were clouded by severe arthritis, and his second marriage to Frances Thomas lasted unfortunately but a few happy months.

Dr. Hertig's contributions to science and medicine are imperishable; his impression on our minds and hearts as a teacher, leader, colleague and friend is indelible.

Respectfully submitted by:

Morris J. Karnovsky, Chair

Kurt Benirschke

George Th. Diamandopoulos

Shirley Driscoll

Robert Ehrmann

Hazel Gore

Lorna Johnson

Norval King

Hermann Lisco

Guido Majno

Robert Scully

February 1, 1996

John Gordon Torrey was a wise, sober man of great determination and high principle -- truthful, straightforward, honest and fair. He brought these attributes to all of his professional judgments and personal relationships.

John Gordon Torrey was the son of the Philadelphia banker W. Edward Torrey and his wife Elsie (Gordon) Torrey. He was born in Philadelphia on February 22, 1921, the third of four children and the second son in the family. He received his B.A. at Williams College in 1942. Then he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as an officer in the Medical Administrative Corps with the 317th Station Hospital in the U.S. and in the European Theatre. Professor Kenneth Thimann recalls that John Torrey came to Harvard while still in uniform and was the first graduate student to come into the Biology Department after World War II. Professor Thimann supervised John Torrey's graduate research; Professor Ralph Wetmore provided additional guidance. After receiving an M.A. from Harvard in 1947, he was awarded a traveling fellowship that enabled him to spend the year 1948-49 at Cambridge University's Botany School. In 1949, in England, he was married to Noreen Lea-Wilson with whom he had become acquainted during his military service in England a few years earlier. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree by Harvard in 1950 but before that time, in 1949, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He remained on the Berkeley faculty until July of 1960 when he took up a Professorship in the Biology Department at Harvard. He retired in 1991 and died on the 7th of January 1993. His remarkable determination and strength of character was evident through his last days. Published obituaries noted that he was survived by his wife, Noreen, and five daughters -- Jennifer, Joanna, Susan, Sarah and Carolyn. Those obituaries failed to note that he was also survived by his teacher, K. V. Thimann, as well as scores of admiring colleagues and former students.

John Torrey identified the subject of his more than fifty year-long research career -- the growth and development of roots -- while an undergraduate at Williams. In his undergraduate research at Williams and then in his Ph. D. research at Harvard, he investigated the role of the plant growth hormone indoleacetic acid on the initiation of branch roots from single cells in the pericyle, a one cell-thick tissue deep in the root. His Harvard Ph. D. thesis reflected Professor Thimann's emphasis on plant physiology and Professor Ralph Wetmore's interest and experience in studying the formation and differentiation of plant tissues and organs. During the 1950's at Berkeley, John Torrey continued to study root morphogenesis; his research papers and reviews are the foundations of much of contemporary experimental root biology.

Starting in the mid-1950s he became interested in nitrogen fixation in plants. The roots of legumes produce nodules inhabited by a form of the Rhizobium bacterium. In the nodules, energy supplied by the plant, in the form of products of photosynthesis, is used to convert atmospheric nitrogen into building blocks for plant proteins. By the mid-1970s nodule formation had become the major subject of John Torrey's research. Some shrubs and trees have nodules that fix atmospheric nitrogen but do not contain Rhizobium bacteria. Such nodules were called mycorrhiza because everyone was certain that a fungus was the plant's partner in nodule formation and nitrogen fixation but the microorganism had never been isolated. All of this changed in 1978 when John Torrey and his coworkers D. Callaham and P. Del Tredici reported that they had isolated from "mycorrhizae" and cultivated in vitro not a fungus but the actinomycete Frankia and showed that it is the nitrogen fixing partner of the nonlegume Comptonia. A new field of research was born because of this information and the availability of Frankia in culture. In the period from 1978 to 1991, John Torrey's laboratory alone published more than 70 papers on aspects of the development and structure of Frankia nodules in actinorrhizal plants.

John Torrey's contributions to science were recognized by many invitations to speak and by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, to the Presidency of the Society for Developmental Biology in 1963, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. His wisdom and good judgment were recognized by his appointment to numerous advisory posts and editorial positions.

Five years after he joined the Harvard faculty, John Torrey was appointed the fifth Director of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research. He retained this position for 10 years. At his initiative the Foundation funded the construction of a much needed expansion of the University's herbaria and the establishment of the Controlled Environment Facility at the Harvard Forest. The latter is now named the John G. Torrey Laboratory.

Because of his research interests, his personal and professional associations with Professor Martin Zimmermann (then Director of the Harvard Forest) and Professor P. B. Tomlinson (the other senior faculty member at the Forest), and his concern for the future of the Harvard Forest, John Torrey moved his laboratory to the Forest in 1970. Upon Professor Zimmermann's untimely death in 1984, John Torrey was appointed Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Director of the Harvard Forest. He remained in that position until 1990. He had a great impact on the Harvard Forest: from initiating Freshman Seminars there to organizing a consortium of scientists from several universities to conduct research at the Forest. The latter led to the award of a large grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a Long Term Ecological Research Site. John Torrey, the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research and the National Science Foundation all contributed to a major strengthening of the Forest. These effects on the Forest must stand among John Torrey's most important enduring entrepreneurial contributions to the University and the scientific community.

At a memorial service for John Torrey about a year ago, his daughter Joanna read a touching piece entitled "My Father, The Collector." It told of his enthusiasm for collecting botanical specimens, old fashioned long-handled drugstore soda spoons and the locations of blue-plate lunch restaurants in the neighborhoods or towns in which he liked to collect. But his particular collecting ardor was saved for British, Scottish and New England etchings from the period of about 1880 to 1930. In his retirement, he planned to study, and to write about, "the interaction, interplay and influence of the group of British etchers on the Americans and vice versa."

John Torrey was outspoken and, in his controlled way, passionate about what he thought was right and what he thought was unjust and thus wrong. This is reflected in his comments on certain aspects of the management of endowment funds by the University in a personal chapter he wrote in 1994 in his short volume on the "History of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research of Harvard University, 1937-1987." He was concerned with the ethics of science and, more, always concerned with the ethics of people in dealing with one another. He is a man to miss.

David R. Foster

Reed C. Rollins

Otto T. Solbrig

Kenneth V. Thimann

Philip Barry Tomlinson

Lawrence Bogorad, Chairman

 

---

Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Arthur T. Hertig

Arthur Tremain Hertig, HMS '30, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy, Emeritus, died suddenly on July 20th, 1990, in his 86th year after a distinguished, varied, and colorful scientific career, much of it spent in association with Harvard Medical School.

Born in Minneapolis, he was initially attracted toward a career in entomology, and indeed began his scientific career as a high school senior working part-time in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. He later wrote that the "vista of science opened for me. At 40 cents an hour the pay and intellectual climate were better than working in a bakery-ice cream establishment," -- where he had worked previously -- "good though that was." His elder brother, Marshall, was an entomologist and no doubt this played a role in Dr. Hertig's life-long interest in entomology; in later years, he termed himself a "pseudo-entomologist." Entomology was pursued as a means of financial support in college and later in medical school. A greatly admired family physician led Hertig to study medicine at the University of Minnesota. Following his freshman year, the lure of entomology drew him to take a two year leave of absence from medical school to work with Marshall in China at the Peking Union Medical College. During the course of his work as Marshall's assistant in field studies on the insect transmission of Kala Azar, the brothers devised an ingenious method for artificially feeding sand flies (the insect vector now known to transmit Kala Azar), and to infect them with Leishmania donovani, the causative agent. The technique was reported in Science in 1927 and was the first of Dr. Hertig's many and diverse scientific papers; he was always proud of this particular publication. Fortuitously, Dr. David L. Edsall, then Dean of the Harvard Medical School, was in China at that time, and young Hertig had the opportunity of demonstrating (with the last captive sand fly of the season!) his technique. Dean Edsall was so impressed with the procedure and its inventor that he invited Hertig to transfer to Harvard Medical School to continue his medical studies, which he did in 1928 (luckily for HMS) after completing his second year in Minnesota.

At that time S. Burt Wolbach, the IVth Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy at HMS and Pathologist-in-Chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was carrying out his authoritative investigations on diseases caused by rickettsiae and their transmission by insects. Naturally, with his interest in entomology, Hertig was drawn to work with Dr. Wolbach and was hired in 1929 to spend a summer of field research with him on Naushon Island and Martha's Vineyard, working on a project to control wood ticks. Hertig's interest in pathology was piqued by his contact with Dr. Wolbach, so, after he graduated M.D. in 1930, he started training as a house officer in pathology at the Peter Bent Brigham. With barely eight months of formal training under his belt, Dr. Hertig was invited by Dr. Wolbach to establish the first pathology laboratory at the former Boston Lying-in Hospital. The invitation was extended while Drs. Wolbach, Farber and Hertig were walking down Longwood Avenue on Valentine's Day, 1931. Fortunately, Dr. Hertig paid no heed to some of his peers who advised him that there was no future in obstetric pathology as reproduction and childbirth were normal, physiologic phenomena -- furthermore, as he pointed out, this was a paying job in the Depression.

In 1933 a one year National Research Council Fellowship in Embryology enabled Dr. Hertig to study at the Carnegie Institute in Baltimore, under the eminent embryologist George L. Streeter. There was a two-fold outcome of his sojourn in Baltimore: a lifelong interest in early human development and in obstetric and gynecologic pathology, and a masterly and beautifully illustrated opus published in 1935, on the cellular events involved in angiogenesis in early human and Macaque monkey placentas. It was also at the Carnegie that Dr. Hertig, "as an interested onlooker", learned a technique developed there of isolating early fertilized ova from primates. This experience was to have enormous consequences in his research some years later. On his return to Boston, Dr. Hertig completed his training in pathology under Dr. Sidney Farber at the Children's Hospital, and was appointed assistant pathologist at the Boston Lying-in Hospital. In addition, on the advice and urging of Frederick C. Irving, Richardson Professor of Obstetrics, he simultaneously undertook full-scale training in obstetrics and gynecology -- no mean feat -- and was later certified a diplomate by both the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Pathology in 1944 and 1946 respectively. Although initially Dr. Hertig was an Instructor in Pathology for six years, by 1948 he had risen to the rank of Professor and pathologist at the two Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals for obstetrics and gynecology, the Boston Lying-in Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women. In 1952, he was appointed Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Chair of the Department of Pathology, positions which he held for 18 and 16 years respectively. In order to return to full-time research, he resigned somewhat ahead of time from the Chair, joining the staff of the New England Primate Center in Southborough, Massachusetts, as Chief of the Division of Pathobiology, (whilst, he said, "I still have all my buttons."). Dr. Hertig became Emeritus in 1974, but continued to work at the Primate Center virtually until his death.

Dr. Hertig often talked about the role of chance in his life, but clearly, in accord with Pasteur's aphorism, chance favored his prepared mind. A further instance of this in Dr. Hertig's career was when he became pathologist at the Free Hospital for Women in 1938, and began his long-standing collaboration, describing the early human ovum, with Dr. John Rock, HMS '18; the egg-harvesting techniques he had observed at the Carnegie for collecting ova now bore fruit. Drs. Hertig and Rock collected 34 normal and abnormal human ova from uteri and fallopian tubes removed for gynecologic disease. These ova were studied in fastidious detail in a series of ageless papers published over a span of fifteen years. These studies included the first description of the earliest stage of human development, the two-cell ovum, which appears in all major textbooks of anatomy, embryology and gynecology. Only 34 of 210 egg-hunts were successful! Those who were present when an "egg-hunt" was in progress marveled at the dedication, care, dexterity and patience displayed in finding the ovum, photographing it at the gross level, then serially sectioning it for microscopic analysis and reconstruction. These systematic studies, accomplished without formal grant support, were basic to the subsequent development of current management of infertile patients and our ability to transplant fertilized ova.

Being a sports fan, Dr. Hertig would not infrequently claim that the successful conclusion of the hunt occurred, for instance, at the very moment Ted Williams hit a home run, or at the moment Dominic DiMaggio tied the 1946 World Series for the Boston Red Sox with a double, and thus the appropriate sobriquet was attached to that particular ovum -- even if it turned out to be a "bad egg," a lost game, or a lost series.

Dr. Hertig's further scientific publications encompass the breadth of obstetric and gynecologic pathology. The early studies on angiogenesis in the early human chorion and in the primary placenta of the Macaque monkey formed the basis for analyses of abortuses, hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma. These reports are basic to our understanding of trophoblastic disease and its treatment. Dr. Hertig's monograph, Human Trophoblast, published in 1968, is the synthesis of his lifelong fascination with this tissue.

Alongside the trophoblastic studies, were fundamental and classic studies on dating the human endometrium in the menstrual cycle, and correlation of the endometrial patterns with corpus luteum development and function. Atypical endometrial patterns were correlated with the development of adenocarcinoma. Together with Paul Younge he worked on the interpretation of early abnormal changes in the cervix preceding the development of squamous cell carcinoma. Overall Dr. Hertig made pioneering and significant contributions in placental pathology, precancerous lesions of the endometrium and cervix, and trophoblastic disease. He wrote all three of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology fascicles dealing with female genital tract tumors. Nevertheless, he took the most pleasure in his studies of the early ovum. Through his research contributions, at a time when obstetric and gynecologic pathology in the USA was dominated by European-trained physicians, Dr. Hertig rose to be the first truly great native-trained pathologist in that subspecialty. Moreover, he was well-known as a caring and compassionate physician. His concern for patients, his wisdom and his vast expertise, made him highly regarded as a consultant on whom clinical colleagues markedly depended for guidance.

After retiring from the Chair of the Department of Pathology in 1968, Dr. Hertig moved his laboratory to the New England Primate Research Center where, with typical zest and curiosity, he focused his attention on nonhuman primate reproductive pathophysiology, and made some remarkable contributions, including investigations of the placental lesions associated with spontaneous abortion, vaginal adenosis, and the ultrastructure of ova.

Dr. Hertig's teaching is remembered by many HMS graduates. He loved introducing medical students to obstetric and gynecologic pathology, but did not neglect ensuring that other areas of pathology were properly covered. Many of the gross specimens and slides were personally inspected as to suitability for the students. His lectures were clear and concise, scholarly and logical, and laced with a delicious sense of humor, personal anecdotes and mordant wit. Dr. Hertig would tell the students that he was "just a hospital pathologist", and that he would lecture on the female reproductive tract, which was important because it was possessed by 50% of the population, and also because "it was the only thing he knew about." What was unique was that Dr. Hertig would sit in on lectures in the course, especially those given by the junior faculty. He would take pages of notes in longhand, just as a student would, and at the end of the lecture hand the notes to the lecturer, saying, "Well, this is what I understood. If I got it wrong, you'd better do something about it." He felt that successful teaching was couched in simple language.

His regard and concern for students was reflected in the fact that, for some years, he endeavored to have every student in the class, in a small group, to tea in his office. This was an enormous consumption of his time, but was a vivid reflection of his concern for students and for teaching. In fact, on two occasions, Dr. Hertig received the highest award at HMS, given by the students themselves, for excellence in teaching, and was made an honorary member of one the graduating classes -- a signal recognition of his interest in students.

After the completion of teaching on Friday mornings, the faculty would meet in the department for lunch. Seated at the head of a long table, Dr. Hertig would regale the company with aphorisms, stories, jokes and pearls of wisdom. In reference to his own career he was fond of saying "I have gone a long way on a few dozen eggs and a bunch of grapes" -- the latter referring to his work on hydatidiform moles. Other favorite phrases were "the morphology, the more fun" (bad puns did not faze him). He would aver that there was little correlation between quality of work and fanciness of laboratory surroundings and equipment. Reflecting on his own research, accomplished without high technology, he stated: "We need high-powered thinking with low-powered tools." Certainly his own major tool was the dissecting microscope. He referred to a luncheon party that he hosted for John Rock, his long-time friend and collaborator, as the "Hertig-Rock festival." His faculty and residents were always eager to hear his words and laugh with him at pomposity. He would recount progress on the refurbishing of his wooden sailboat, including bending the ribs, an art which he had learnt from a carpenter at the medical school. Sailing was his main hobby, relished at his summer home in Gloucester, Mass. A whale washed up on his beach one year, and the saga of having it removed -- all officialdom disclaiming responsibility -- entertained his listeners for weeks; some accused him of deliberately arranging the beaching as a conversation piece! His adventures in China must have led to a liking for Chinese food: he would expound on and demonstrate the use of chopsticks.

He loved words, their twists of meaning and their sound, and would insist on correct and euphonious usage, which entailed frequent consulting of dictionaries and thesauri. On accepting the highest award of the American Association of Pathologists, the Gold-Headed Cane, he said he was both "astounded" and "surprised" -- astounded by the honor, and surprised when he heard of it. He then discoursed learnedly on the differences in precise meaning of these words. He quoted the anecdote concerning Dr. Samuel Johnson, discovered by his wife kissing the maid. Johnson's wife exclaimed: "Why, Dr. Johnson, I am surprised." Said Johnson, "On the contrary, madame, you are astounded; I am surprised!" Dr. Hertig wittily pointed out that actually "surprise" and "astound" can be in some senses synonymous, which leaves us "a bit confused, as undoubtedly, both the wife and Dr. Johnson were, not to mention the maid herself." Paradoxically, he disliked writing papers, agonized over them: nevertheless, he has some 200 papers to his name. He spent hours going over manuscripts and grant applications of junior faculty. The writings of E.B. White, particularly Stuart Little, were much quoted.

Happenings in his science as well as in his personal life were described in vivid terms. In his biographic sketch, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1973, he synopsized his career as "forty years in the female pelvis -- a case of prolonged dystocia." Many will remember his exhortation when life looked gloomy -- "Be of good cheer!"

Dr. Hertig took an active leadership role in many professional societies. These included inter alia, President of the American Board of Pathology, the New England Society of Pathology, the New England Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, Governor of the College of American Pathologists, and a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Consultants to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

He received many awards and honors: among these were election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, corecipient with John Rock of the American Gynecological Society Award, the Ward Burdick Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology, Distinguished Service Awards from the College of American Pathologists, the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (also elected an Honorary Fellow), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (which also inducted him into their Hall of Fame), the American Gynecological Society, and from the International Academy of Pathology, the Distinguished Pathologist Award. The American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists gave him its most prestigious award, the "Gold-Headed Cane"; and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London, elected him an honorary ad eundem fellow (only one American a year can be so honored).

It was typical of the man that in a published speech "On Accepting An Award," he declared, in tribute to his teachers, "Pigmaei gigantum humerus impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident" -- pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.

Many are those who have stood on Dr. Hertig's shoulders, and have become well-known and successful in their own right. A ruddy-faced, rather bluff man, Dr. Hertig revealed, on acquaintance, an outgoing, kind and sensitive persona. Generous with his time and wisdom, his teaching of fellows and residents was vivid, full of wit and whimsy, and laced with countless humorous anecdotes. When he viewed something through the microscope that was distinctive but not familiar, he would say: "This is a classic example of whatever it is!" An inspiring, tireless and kind teacher of residents and fellows, he could not stand cant and pomposity, stating: "One must take the job but not one's self seriously."

Dr. Hertig, his beloved wife, Linda, on whom he was greatly dependent, and their two children, Helen and Andrew, led a happy, close-knit home life. Many students, residents and faculty will remember gracious hospitality at their homes in Winchester and Mussel Point, Gloucester, Mass., and numerous kind gestures of helpful interest in their personal lives. Tragedy struck in 1983 when Helen and her younger daughter were killed in a plane crash; in 1988, Linda died. Dr. Hertig bore these blows with fortitude, sustained by his strong religious faith, and supported by Andrew and his family, and Helen's children. His later years were clouded by severe arthritis, and his second marriage to Frances Thomas lasted unfortunately but a few happy months.

Dr. Hertig's contributions to science and medicine are imperishable; his impression on our minds and hearts as a teacher, leader, colleague and friend is indelible.

Respectfully submitted by:

Morris J. Karnovsky, Chair

Kurt Benirschke

George Th. Diamandopoulos

Shirley Driscoll

Robert Ehrmann

Hazel Gore

Lorna Johnson

Norval King

Hermann Lisco

Guido Majno

Robert Scully

February 1, 1996

John Gordon Torrey was a wise, sober man of great determination and high principle -- truthful, straightforward, honest and fair. He brought these attributes to all of his professional judgments and personal relationships.

John Gordon Torrey was the son of the Philadelphia banker W. Edward Torrey and his wife Elsie (Gordon) Torrey. He was born in Philadelphia on February 22, 1921, the third of four children and the second son in the family. He received his B.A. at Williams College in 1942. Then he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as an officer in the Medical Administrative Corps with the 317th Station Hospital in the U.S. and in the European Theatre. Professor Kenneth Thimann recalls that John Torrey came to Harvard while still in uniform and was the first graduate student to come into the Biology Department after World War II. Professor Thimann supervised John Torrey's graduate research; Professor Ralph Wetmore provided additional guidance. After receiving an M.A. from Harvard in 1947, he was awarded a traveling fellowship that enabled him to spend the year 1948-49 at Cambridge University's Botany School. In 1949, in England, he was married to Noreen Lea-Wilson with whom he had become acquainted during his military service in England a few years earlier. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree by Harvard in 1950 but before that time, in 1949, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He remained on the Berkeley faculty until July of 1960 when he took up a Professorship in the Biology Department at Harvard. He retired in 1991 and died on the 7th of January 1993. His remarkable determination and strength of character was evident through his last days. Published obituaries noted that he was survived by his wife, Noreen, and five daughters -- Jennifer, Joanna, Susan, Sarah and Carolyn. Those obituaries failed to note that he was also survived by his teacher, K. V. Thimann, as well as scores of admiring colleagues and former students.

John Torrey identified the subject of his more than fifty year-long research career -- the growth and development of roots -- while an undergraduate at Williams. In his undergraduate research at Williams and then in his Ph. D. research at Harvard, he investigated the role of the plant growth hormone indoleacetic acid on the initiation of branch roots from single cells in the pericyle, a one cell-thick tissue deep in the root. His Harvard Ph. D. thesis reflected Professor Thimann's emphasis on plant physiology and Professor Ralph Wetmore's interest and experience in studying the formation and differentiation of plant tissues and organs. During the 1950's at Berkeley, John Torrey continued to study root morphogenesis; his research papers and reviews are the foundations of much of contemporary experimental root biology.

Starting in the mid-1950s he became interested in nitrogen fixation in plants. The roots of legumes produce nodules inhabited by a form of the Rhizobium bacterium. In the nodules, energy supplied by the plant, in the form of products of photosynthesis, is used to convert atmospheric nitrogen into building blocks for plant proteins. By the mid-1970s nodule formation had become the major subject of John Torrey's research. Some shrubs and trees have nodules that fix atmospheric nitrogen but do not contain Rhizobium bacteria. Such nodules were called mycorrhiza because everyone was certain that a fungus was the plant's partner in nodule formation and nitrogen fixation but the microorganism had never been isolated. All of this changed in 1978 when John Torrey and his coworkers D. Callaham and P. Del Tredici reported that they had isolated from "mycorrhizae" and cultivated in vitro not a fungus but the actinomycete Frankia and showed that it is the nitrogen fixing partner of the nonlegume Comptonia. A new field of research was born because of this information and the availability of Frankia in culture. In the period from 1978 to 1991, John Torrey's laboratory alone published more than 70 papers on aspects of the development and structure of Frankia nodules in actinorrhizal plants.

John Torrey's contributions to science were recognized by many invitations to speak and by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, to the Presidency of the Society for Developmental Biology in 1963, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. His wisdom and good judgment were recognized by his appointment to numerous advisory posts and editorial positions.

Five years after he joined the Harvard faculty, John Torrey was appointed the fifth Director of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research. He retained this position for 10 years. At his initiative the Foundation funded the construction of a much needed expansion of the University's herbaria and the establishment of the Controlled Environment Facility at the Harvard Forest. The latter is now named the John G. Torrey Laboratory.

Because of his research interests, his personal and professional associations with Professor Martin Zimmermann (then Director of the Harvard Forest) and Professor P. B. Tomlinson (the other senior faculty member at the Forest), and his concern for the future of the Harvard Forest, John Torrey moved his laboratory to the Forest in 1970. Upon Professor Zimmermann's untimely death in 1984, John Torrey was appointed Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Director of the Harvard Forest. He remained in that position until 1990. He had a great impact on the Harvard Forest: from initiating Freshman Seminars there to organizing a consortium of scientists from several universities to conduct research at the Forest. The latter led to the award of a large grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a Long Term Ecological Research Site. John Torrey, the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research and the National Science Foundation all contributed to a major strengthening of the Forest. These effects on the Forest must stand among John Torrey's most important enduring entrepreneurial contributions to the University and the scientific community.

At a memorial service for John Torrey about a year ago, his daughter Joanna read a touching piece entitled "My Father, The Collector." It told of his enthusiasm for collecting botanical specimens, old fashioned long-handled drugstore soda spoons and the locations of blue-plate lunch restaurants in the neighborhoods or towns in which he liked to collect. But his particular collecting ardor was saved for British, Scottish and New England etchings from the period of about 1880 to 1930. In his retirement, he planned to study, and to write about, "the interaction, interplay and influence of the group of British etchers on the Americans and vice versa."

John Torrey was outspoken and, in his controlled way, passionate about what he thought was right and what he thought was unjust and thus wrong. This is reflected in his comments on certain aspects of the management of endowment funds by the University in a personal chapter he wrote in 1994 in his short volume on the "History of the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research of Harvard University, 1937-1987." He was concerned with the ethics of science and, more, always concerned with the ethics of people in dealing with one another. He is a man to miss.

David R. Foster

Reed C. Rollins

Otto T. Solbrig

Kenneth V. Thimann

Philip Barry Tomlinson

Lawrence Bogorad, Chairman

 

---

Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Arthur T. Hertig

Arthur Tremain Hertig, HMS '30, Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy, Emeritus, died suddenly on July 20th, 1990, in his 86th year after a distinguished, varied, and colorful scientific career, much of it spent in association with Harvard Medical School.

Born in Minneapolis, he was initially attracted toward a career in entomology, and indeed began his scientific career as a high school senior working part-time in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. He later wrote that the "vista of science opened for me. At 40 cents an hour the pay and intellectual climate were better than working in a bakery-ice cream establishment," -- where he had worked previously -- "good though that was." His elder brother, Marshall, was an entomologist and no doubt this played a role in Dr. Hertig's life-long interest in entomology; in later years, he termed himself a "pseudo-entomologist." Entomology was pursued as a means of financial support in college and later in medical school. A greatly admired family physician led Hertig to study medicine at the University of Minnesota. Following his freshman year, the lure of entomology drew him to take a two year leave of absence from medical school to work with Marshall in China at the Peking Union Medical College. During the course of his work as Marshall's assistant in field studies on the insect transmission of Kala Azar, the brothers devised an ingenious method for artificially feeding sand flies (the insect vector now known to transmit Kala Azar), and to infect them with Leishmania donovani, the causative agent. The technique was reported in Science in 1927 and was the first of Dr. Hertig's many and diverse scientific papers; he was always proud of this particular publication. Fortuitously, Dr. David L. Edsall, then Dean of the Harvard Medical School, was in China at that time, and young Hertig had the opportunity of demonstrating (with the last captive sand fly of the season!) his technique. Dean Edsall was so impressed with the procedure and its inventor that he invited Hertig to transfer to Harvard Medical School to continue his medical studies, which he did in 1928 (luckily for HMS) after completing his second year in Minnesota.

At that time S. Burt Wolbach, the IVth Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy at HMS and Pathologist-in-Chief at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was carrying out his authoritative investigations on diseases caused by rickettsiae and their transmission by insects. Naturally, with his interest in entomology, Hertig was drawn to work with Dr. Wolbach and was hired in 1929 to spend a summer of field research with him on Naushon Island and Martha's Vineyard, working on a project to control wood ticks. Hertig's interest in pathology was piqued by his contact with Dr. Wolbach, so, after he graduated M.D. in 1930, he started training as a house officer in pathology at the Peter Bent Brigham. With barely eight months of formal training under his belt, Dr. Hertig was invited by Dr. Wolbach to establish the first pathology laboratory at the former Boston Lying-in Hospital. The invitation was extended while Drs. Wolbach, Farber and Hertig were walking down Longwood Avenue on Valentine's Day, 1931. Fortunately, Dr. Hertig paid no heed to some of his peers who advised him that there was no future in obstetric pathology as reproduction and childbirth were normal, physiologic phenomena -- furthermore, as he pointed out, this was a paying job in the Depression.

In 1933 a one year National Research Council Fellowship in Embryology enabled Dr. Hertig to study at the Carnegie Institute in Baltimore, under the eminent embryologist George L. Streeter. There was a two-fold outcome of his sojourn in Baltimore: a lifelong interest in early human development and in obstetric and gynecologic pathology, and a masterly and beautifully illustrated opus published in 1935, on the cellular events involved in angiogenesis in early human and Macaque monkey placentas. It was also at the Carnegie that Dr. Hertig, "as an interested onlooker", learned a technique developed there of isolating early fertilized ova from primates. This experience was to have enormous consequences in his research some years later. On his return to Boston, Dr. Hertig completed his training in pathology under Dr. Sidney Farber at the Children's Hospital, and was appointed assistant pathologist at the Boston Lying-in Hospital. In addition, on the advice and urging of Frederick C. Irving, Richardson Professor of Obstetrics, he simultaneously undertook full-scale training in obstetrics and gynecology -- no mean feat -- and was later certified a diplomate by both the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Pathology in 1944 and 1946 respectively. Although initially Dr. Hertig was an Instructor in Pathology for six years, by 1948 he had risen to the rank of Professor and pathologist at the two Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals for obstetrics and gynecology, the Boston Lying-in Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women. In 1952, he was appointed Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Chair of the Department of Pathology, positions which he held for 18 and 16 years respectively. In order to return to full-time research, he resigned somewhat ahead of time from the Chair, joining the staff of the New England Primate Center in Southborough, Massachusetts, as Chief of the Division of Pathobiology, (whilst, he said, "I still have all my buttons."). Dr. Hertig became Emeritus in 1974, but continued to work at the Primate Center virtually until his death.

Dr. Hertig often talked about the role of chance in his life, but clearly, in accord with Pasteur's aphorism, chance favored his prepared mind. A further instance of this in Dr. Hertig's career was when he became pathologist at the Free Hospital for Women in 1938, and began his long-standing collaboration, describing the early human ovum, with Dr. John Rock, HMS '18; the egg-harvesting techniques he had observed at the Carnegie for collecting ova now bore fruit. Drs. Hertig and Rock collected 34 normal and abnormal human ova from uteri and fallopian tubes removed for gynecologic disease. These ova were studied in fastidious detail in a series of ageless papers published over a span of fifteen years. These studies included the first description of the earliest stage of human development, the two-cell ovum, which appears in all major textbooks of anatomy, embryology and gynecology. Only 34 of 210 egg-hunts were successful! Those who were present when an "egg-hunt" was in progress marveled at the dedication, care, dexterity and patience displayed in finding the ovum, photographing it at the gross level, then serially sectioning it for microscopic analysis and reconstruction. These systematic studies, accomplished without formal grant support, were basic to the subsequent development of current management of infertile patients and our ability to transplant fertilized ova.

Being a sports fan, Dr. Hertig would not infrequently claim that the successful conclusion of the hunt occurred, for instance, at the very moment Ted Williams hit a home run, or at the moment Dominic DiMaggio tied the 1946 World Series for the Boston Red Sox with a double, and thus the appropriate sobriquet was attached to that particular ovum -- even if it turned out to be a "bad egg," a lost game, or a lost series.

Dr. Hertig's further scientific publications encompass the breadth of obstetric and gynecologic pathology. The early studies on angiogenesis in the early human chorion and in the primary placenta of the Macaque monkey formed the basis for analyses of abortuses, hydatidiform mole and choriocarcinoma. These reports are basic to our understanding of trophoblastic disease and its treatment. Dr. Hertig's monograph, Human Trophoblast, published in 1968, is the synthesis of his lifelong fascination with this tissue.

Alongside the trophoblastic studies, were fundamental and classic studies on dating the human endometrium in the menstrual cycle, and correlation of the endometrial patterns with corpus luteum development and function. Atypical endometrial patterns were correlated with the development of adenocarcinoma. Together with Paul Younge he worked on the interpretation of early abnormal changes in the cervix preceding the development of squamous cell carcinoma. Overall Dr. Hertig made pioneering and significant contributions in placental pathology, precancerous lesions of the endometrium and cervix, and trophoblastic disease. He wrote all three of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology fascicles dealing with female genital tract tumors. Nevertheless, he took the most pleasure in his studies of the early ovum. Through his research contributions, at a time when obstetric and gynecologic pathology in the USA was dominated by European-trained physicians, Dr. Hertig rose to be the first truly great native-trained pathologist in that subspecialty. Moreover, he was well-known as a caring and compassionate physician. His concern for patients, his wisdom and his vast expertise, made him highly regarded as a consultant on whom clinical colleagues markedly depended for guidance.

After retiring from the Chair of the Department of Pathology in 1968, Dr. Hertig moved his laboratory to the New England Primate Research Center where, with typical zest and curiosity, he focused his attention on nonhuman primate reproductive pathophysiology, and made some remarkable contributions, including investigations of the placental lesions associated with spontaneous abortion, vaginal adenosis, and the ultrastructure of ova.

Dr. Hertig's teaching is remembered by many HMS graduates. He loved introducing medical students to obstetric and gynecologic pathology, but did not neglect ensuring that other areas of pathology were properly covered. Many of the gross specimens and slides were personally inspected as to suitability for the students. His lectures were clear and concise, scholarly and logical, and laced with a delicious sense of humor, personal anecdotes and mordant wit. Dr. Hertig would tell the students that he was "just a hospital pathologist", and that he would lecture on the female reproductive tract, which was important because it was possessed by 50% of the population, and also because "it was the only thing he knew about." What was unique was that Dr. Hertig would sit in on lectures in the course, especially those given by the junior faculty. He would take pages of notes in longhand, just as a student would, and at the end of the lecture hand the notes to the lecturer, saying, "Well, this is what I understood. If I got it wrong, you'd better do something about it." He felt that successful teaching was couched in simple language.

His regard and concern for students was reflected in the fact that, for some years, he endeavored to have every student in the class, in a small group, to tea in his office. This was an enormous consumption of his time, but was a vivid reflection of his concern for students and for teaching. In fact, on two occasions, Dr. Hertig received the highest award at HMS, given by the students themselves, for excellence in teaching, and was made an honorary member of one the graduating classes -- a signal recognition of his interest in students.

After the completion of teaching on Friday mornings, the faculty would meet in the department for lunch. Seated at the head of a long table, Dr. Hertig would regale the company with aphorisms, stories, jokes and pearls of wisdom. In reference to his own career he was fond of saying "I have gone a long way on a few dozen eggs and a bunch of grapes" -- the latter referring to his work on hydatidiform moles. Other favorite phrases were "the morphology, the more fun" (bad puns did not faze him). He would aver that there was little correlation between quality of work and fanciness of laboratory surroundings and equipment. Reflecting on his own research, accomplished without high technology, he stated: "We need high-powered thinking with low-powered tools." Certainly his own major tool was the dissecting microscope. He referred to a luncheon party that he hosted for John Rock, his long-time friend and collaborator, as the "Hertig-Rock festival." His faculty and residents were always eager to hear his words and laugh with him at pomposity. He would recount progress on the refurbishing of his wooden sailboat, including bending the ribs, an art which he had learnt from a carpenter at the medical school. Sailing was his main hobby, relished at his summer home in Gloucester, Mass. A whale washed up on his beach one year, and the saga of having it removed -- all officialdom disclaiming responsibility -- entertained his listeners for weeks; some accused him of deliberately arranging the beaching as a conversation piece! His adventures in China must have led to a liking for Chinese food: he would expound on and demonstrate the use of chopsticks.

He loved words, their twists of meaning and their sound, and would insist on correct and euphonious usage, which entailed frequent consulting of dictionaries and thesauri. On accepting the highest award of the American Association of Pathologists, the Gold-Headed Cane, he said he was both "astounded" and "surprised" -- astounded by the honor, and surprised when he heard of it. He then discoursed learnedly on the differences in precise meaning of these words. He quoted the anecdote concerning Dr. Samuel Johnson, discovered by his wife kissing the maid. Johnson's wife exclaimed: "Why, Dr. Johnson, I am surprised." Said Johnson, "On the contrary, madame, you are astounded; I am surprised!" Dr. Hertig wittily pointed out that actually "surprise" and "astound" can be in some senses synonymous, which leaves us "a bit confused, as undoubtedly, both the wife and Dr. Johnson were, not to mention the maid herself." Paradoxically, he disliked writing papers, agonized over them: nevertheless, he has some 200 papers to his name. He spent hours going over manuscripts and grant applications of junior faculty. The writings of E.B. White, particularly Stuart Little, were much quoted.

Happenings in his science as well as in his personal life were described in vivid terms. In his biographic sketch, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1973, he synopsized his career as "forty years in the female pelvis -- a case of prolonged dystocia." Many will remember his exhortation when life looked gloomy -- "Be of good cheer!"

Dr. Hertig took an active leadership role in many professional societies. These included inter alia, President of the American Board of Pathology, the New England Society of Pathology, the New England Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, Governor of the College of American Pathologists, and a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Consultants to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

He received many awards and honors: among these were election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, corecipient with John Rock of the American Gynecological Society Award, the Ward Burdick Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology, Distinguished Service Awards from the College of American Pathologists, the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (also elected an Honorary Fellow), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (which also inducted him into their Hall of Fame), the American Gynecological Society, and from the International Academy of Pathology, the Distinguished Pathologist Award. The American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists gave him its most prestigious award, the "Gold-Headed Cane"; and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London, elected him an honorary ad eundem fellow (only one American a year can be so honored).

It was typical of the man that in a published speech "On Accepting An Award," he declared, in tribute to his teachers, "Pigmaei gigantum humerus impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident" -- pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.

Many are those who have stood on Dr. Hertig's shoulders, and have become well-known and successful in their own right. A ruddy-faced, rather bluff man, Dr. Hertig revealed, on acquaintance, an outgoing, kind and sensitive persona. Generous with his time and wisdom, his teaching of fellows and residents was vivid, full of wit and whimsy, and laced with countless humorous anecdotes. When he viewed something through the microscope that was distinctive but not familiar, he would say: "This is a classic example of whatever it is!" An inspiring, tireless and kind teacher of residents and fellows, he could not stand cant and pomposity, stating: "One must take the job but not one's self seriously."

Dr. Hertig, his beloved wife, Linda, on whom he was greatly dependent, and their two children, Helen and Andrew, led a happy, close-knit home life. Many students, residents and faculty will remember gracious hospitality at their homes in Winchester and Mussel Point, Gloucester, Mass., and numerous kind gestures of helpful interest in their personal lives. Tragedy struck in 1983 when Helen and her younger daughter were killed in a plane crash; in 1988, Linda died. Dr. Hertig bore these blows with fortitude, sustained by his strong religious faith, and supported by Andrew and his family, and Helen's children. His later years were clouded by severe arthritis, and his second marriage to Frances Thomas lasted unfortunately but a few happy months.

Dr. Hertig's contributions to science and medicine are imperishable; his impression on our minds and hearts as a teacher, leader, colleague and friend is indelible.

Respectfully submitted by:

Morris J. Karnovsky, Chair

Kurt Benirschke

George Th. Diamandopoulos

Shirley Driscoll

Robert Ehrmann

Hazel Gore

Lorna Johnson

Norval King

Hermann Lisco

Guido Majno

Robert Scully

February 1, 1996